


Here I Am

by CaseMatthews



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alpha Castiel, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst like wow, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Basically BDSM, Collars, Dean isn't treated well, Drops and subspace, Dubious Consent, Light BDSM, M/M, Mpreg, Non-Consensual Spanking, Omega Dean Winchester, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Harm, Underage Sex, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:17:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaseMatthews/pseuds/CaseMatthews
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's finally making his way home from what could possibly be the most boring Medical Conference he's ever had to live through when the scent of an unmated omega all but leaps into his path and demands his attention. So Castiel really can't be blamed when he follows the boy home and offers his own price for the little one, inadvertently adopting Dean's twelve year old brother for his efforts. Apparently mating with the feral little thing is almost more trouble than it's worth, except when it's not.</p><p>Dean looks so pretty flushed and begging, it's practically impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Found

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, fair warning right now, this fic isn't fluff and domestic bliss, okay? This is abuse and non-consensual, and Dean is miserable as sin for a fair damn chunk of this tale, so bear that in mind before committing. That being said, this fic is about working on mistakes (even HUGE ones like the whole mating fiasco) and I promise it ends with happiness and a fair amount of pay back. Also, Gabriel.
> 
> WIP right now, and I'm also looking for a Beta, so if anyone could lend a helping hand on that level, I would be so damn grateful.  
>  
> 
> EDIT:::  
> Currently, and sadly, this fic is on hiatus. I'm in the process of editing it out and smoothing down jagged corners, so I apologise completely because it might take some time before I get on with it. Thanks to everyone for reading and for sticking with it even over the bumps and grinds, you guys rule.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.

 

Castiel runs out of gas.

Which is why he’s currently holed up in some back-board town in Kansas state; why he’s holding back the roll of his eyes at some pimpled, virgin of a beta behind the till of a gas-station; why he’s exasperated out of his wits; and why, when the unmated, Greek god of an omega sneaks a trembling hand to a stray tootsie roll on the shelf, Castiel distracts pimple-boy for enough time that the boy can be on his merry way with nothing more than an interested smirk from the alpha.

Pimple-boy notices anyway and the boy’s running—wide eyes ( _the brightest green Castiel’s ever seen shining their way_ ) shifting from gawping up at Castiel to smirking gaudily at the till assistant—out through the door again and zipping around the corner faster than either of them can register his bare-faced cheek.

It makes the corners of Castiel’s dried out lips ( _Missouri in summer, it’s inevitable_ ) tug into an impressed little grin. He inhales the air around him and huffs it back out—pleased—when he finds the boy is most definitely unmated, an omega, and the sweetest goddamn thing Castiel has ever been granted in his entire life. Like fig leaves. A citrus-like edge though, because now the base for the scent has high-tailed from the vicinity, Castiel can scent that wonderful combination of lime and oranges—that tacky, unmated scent mushing it up wonderfully. Unusual. Perfect.

It shouldn’t work, but by god, it does.

“Dumb fucking bitch,” the shop-assistant glares, eyes boring into the boy’s invisible scent-trail, as though by staring at it would inspire the little thing to come traipsing back in here with his hands held wrists together and offer the stray tootsie roll in one perfect little hand. Castiel scowls warningly at him ( _language_ ) and slaps his card down on the table to earn back the pimpled-one’s attention.

He smiles sheepishly at Castiel’s raised, unamused eyebrow, and scans his card through. “Idiot,” he (Jackson _, now Castiel has the incentive to look_ ) reiterates, as though Castiel isn’t glaring his blatant warning straight at him, oblivious. “Been doing this for years, thinks I don’t know what he’s playing at. Fucking Winchester’s, man. Next as dumb as the last, I’m telling you. Just pure luck that this one ended as a hole, I guess. Not exactly hard to trace his scent, you know?”

Mm. Definitely.

And as much as this moron’s been an utter insult to Castiel and this ‘ _Winchester hole’_ both, he can’t help but appreciate the knowledge Jackson’s unwittingly given over.

So he smiles at the virgin and makes his leave, snatching his card back and ensuring his smile isn’t a realistic one. Jackson looks utterly nonplussed by the cold treatment, and he’s back to his car-magazine covered porn in seconds. Looking at _holes_ , Castiel would imagine. Disgusting insult it is.

Jackson’s right, however, and it takes Castiel barely twenty minutes to roll his window down, scent along the roads and follow his omega-find straight back to its freshly-stinking origin.

A small house—tucked neatly into your average, Kansas, suburban street—white picket-fences all round and a neatly preened rose garden welcoming him when Castiel steps from his rental car and makes his way to the scarlet red front door.

He scents the air before knocking, inhaling the wonderful ( _strong here, perfect_ ) scent where he’s clearly been not five minutes ago, and relaxes into the knowledge that the unmated omega is somewhere on the other side of that door.

He knocks and waits patiently.

Bustling sounds from within with the distinct click of late-night television being switched off, and some one—female—grumbles as they make their way to the door.

A middle-aged woman answers, African-American, and for a second Castiel wonders if he got the wrong house in first place. He dismisses that thought rather rapidly when the fig-scent hits him full force for the second time ( _fresh now, physical_ ) and the curtain beside him on the front room window twitches and gives way to one wide, too-green eye. He smiles, and the eye jolts back.

“Hello,” the woman greets, voice and betan scent twisted in tired curiosity. “Can I help you with something, mister?”

Castiel turns his smile to her.

“Good evening,” he offers, hopefully looking sincere. And then suddenly…he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here. He just followed an unmated, slip of an omega in his car by tracing his scent and here he is, stood on this doorstep and looking little more than an utter weirdo and knot-head that can’t control his needy hormones. Not that Castiel can blame them. The boy really does smell fantastic. “I was at the gas station down the road,” he offers by way of petty explanation. “A boy—”

“Dean!” she bellows suddenly, swinging the door open and storming back into the house. Castiel follows hesitantly, and then with purpose when the scent of his omega swarms him and echoes with a swaying strength. He follows the woman to a wide entry-way filtering into a living room and stands there, awkwardly, until Dean peers into view, a tuft of dark sandy hair making itself known over the top of a red leather couch. His green eyed gaze flickers from the beta to Castiel, widening with each shift and Castiel can’t help the dazed little smile at such a childish gesture. He’s hiding behind a _couch_ , for Christ’s sake.

“What did you do?” the woman shouts, gripping the scruff of his neck when she gets close enough and hauling him into standing—the length of his denim clad body slowly revealed; soft muscles beneath the fabric and splaying fingers twitching as his body gives him up. Castiel’s alpha growls in the pit of his stomach that this woman is touching him with such motherly familiarity ( _the scent gives them swiftly away, let alone the hue of their skin_ ) but he shoves a stopper on the unhappy wolf and leans calmly against a wall.

A dark hand shoves itself into the boy’s back pocket and he yelps in the grip, twisting ever so slightly beneath her, but reinstating himself with a despondent keen when she tightens her fingers.

“You stealing again, boy?” she demands, revealing the stolen candy with an angered, exasperated expression and holding it aloft like a captured string of pearls. “How many goddamn _times_ , Dean,” she mutters, and then with more volume adds to Castiel, “He been bothering you, sir?” then to Dean, “You been bothering this man? He’s an alpha, you _get_ that,” hissed against his hair, “You _idiot_.”

“He’s not been any trouble, I assure you,” Castiel sates, raising his palms in compensation.

The woman smacks Dean’s backside ( _Castiel holds in the growl_ ) hard enough for him to jolt against the couch and for an echo of flesh on muting fabric to enter the room, before animatedly returning to what Castiel will assume is her seat. Dean glowers from beneath long lashes, before rubbing at himself and sinking sulkily to her feet.

“Then what is it you want, mister?” she asks, now wary, but only just lowering a hand to sate the petulant omega and thread fingers through his hair. He forgives her quickly, apparently, because he’s mewling almost silently against her black-clad shin in seconds.

Castiel sighs. Now isn’t that the question. “I think,” he starts, then thinks better of it. “I’m interested in him. Dean, is it?” he asks.

The woman nods, eyes widened. Dean lowers his gaze in turn, but Castiel can see the disbelieving glare light his features—the ruddy quality of a blush tilting freckles into the light and Castiel revels in the bitty wave of discomfort he exudes. Poor thing, so shy in the gaze of such an attention. He’s adorable, he really is. Can’t be older than sixteen, bless him.

“You’re interested in him?” the woman asks.

Castiel shakes his head, clearing it, before perching on the blue couch opposite them. “My names Dr Castiel Novak. I’m a cardiovascular surgeon in San Diego, California. I can assure you, I have more than enough money to keep Dean comfortably and pay any dowry price you see fit for him.” He smirks. “The boy…interests me.”

The boy in question seems to take that to the extreme because he’s gawping widely at Castiel from where he’s almost buried himself behind the lady’s leg, clinging to the cheap fabric. He peers up at her with a desperately worried frown, before narrowing his gaze back to Castiel.

Castiel can see him trembling, and isn’t that utterly precious?

“I…see,” she says, tentative. “My names Missouri. And yes, this…this is Dean.” Her words are wispy, as though she’s barely paying attention, though her gaze is rocket focused on a very clearly anxious Dean. Omega distress is echoing in troves, and Castiel almost balks from it. If he were this boy’s mate or even carer, he wouldn’t be paying attention either. So he offers Missouri her time.

It takes two minutes: Dean deflated somewhat when Missouri’s hand meets the joint of his clavicle, nuzzling his nose against the ball of her knee and vibrating his voice in a solid, nervous trill to offer proof of his discomfort. _Dean’s_ probably not even aware he’s doing it. _The omega_ very greatly is.

Missouri’s better equipped at any rate, and she tugs him closer to her lap until his whole top half is resting flat out against it. She strokes along his spine and nudges the odd pressure point that makes him either relax minutely or shuffle eagerly into her grip. Castiel will have to remember those, he’s sure. He’ll need to calm his find.

“You want to buy him?” Missouri asks, and Dean huffs agitatedly at the reminder.

“Yes.”

“Mmm,” she hums, noncommittally. Castiel knows it’s not a question of relenting either—even if Dean himself doesn’t understand, Castiel would trust that Missouri appreciates the boys biological _need_ for an alpha. Considering the state of the town, Castiel’s probably the best suitor he’s ever had.

“I’m sure he has other offers,” Castiel says, leaning closer. “And I’m sure Dean wouldn’t enjoy being taken so far from his home, but I can take care of him there. And I promise I will.”

Missouri’s expression darkens. “No one in this town is laying a damn finger on him, I don’t care how much they offer.” She soothes Dean. “Better off with an outsider, anyway.”

Dean huffs his discomfort at the notion, but he still doesn’t say anything. Castiel wonders why exactly that is; he’s obviously not completely shy, he just stole blatantly from a shop clerk.

“Anything you ask for, it’s yours,” he says.

“How’s fifty sound?”

Fifty thousand? Castiel glances down at the now utterly panicking boy and smiles. Fifty sounds perfect.

“Sixty, and he’s handed to me entirely, no fees depending on offspring, no contact I don’t allow. I won’t keep him prisoner, Missouri, but I am a traditional alpha. If Dean belongs to me, he _belongs_ to me.”

 _Naked in my bed with my collar and my scent marking up that tanned flesh,_ Castiel thinks happily, scenting the air once again and reveling in the base nudge it gives him. _Plump with my pups and keeping for me._

Though now is not the time to get a knot.

Dean’s looking desperate now, focus whipping from Missouri to Castiel and back again, crawling upright on his knees to peer eagerly up at her. She’s looking sad but resilient, though, so he starts begging, keening through his words:

“Sam,” he says, heartbroken ( _wonderful voice though,_ perfect), “I can’t leave Sammy, Mama, please don’t, please, I’ll…”

She’s apparently not offering the relent that Dean’s after, though, so he huffily shifts his gaze to Castiel and starts again, “Sir,” he whispers, even as his eyes narrow into a scowl. “I can’t leave my brother, okay? You don’t understand, I can’t leave him now, he’ll never forgive me, _Mama_ ,” he turns back to Missouri, “Not now, please. After last month, I can’t…I _can’t_ leave him. I _won’t_.”

The omega ordering won’t do, of course, but Castiel’s curiosity has gripped the better of him. “What happened last month?” he asks.

Both sets of eyes stare over at him and, if it’s even possible, Dean’s pained discomfort escalates and his face crumples unwillingly with an unhappy little keen. Castiel should comfort him and he will. Just as soon as the boy is his officially, he’ll knot him through his heat ( _it won’t be long now, Castiel can almost taste it_ ) and soothe words against his pink little ear.

“Blast from the past,” Missouri says, as though that explains anything. “The boys had a little shock on Sam’s birthday…look, Mister Novak…I don’t think it’ll do the boy well to leave his brother behind right now. As much as I want him happy, I do, I don’t think splitting them’s gonna be a good way to go about it.”

Castiel could order them, of course, take them to court. He could have his omega in his bed ( _sobbing from a loss or not_ ) within the next day, and he could distract him with his heat and imminent pup’s anyway, he knows he could. But he also knows the impact that would have on his little one. The shock that would hit his fragile, needy system if he was forced to live without his brother after apparently dealing so long being with him. Castiel can’t do that to him, and he won’t. But he also will not leave Dean behind now that he has him, not in a million years, so there’s only one thing to do.

“That’s fine. Sam can come with us.”

The look on Dean’s face is priceless and Castiel wonders if those lips would widen enough to accommodate a knot. Probably. They can always work on it.

“Mr Novak, you don’t have to…”

“Nonsense,” Castiel says, waving Missouri off. “I want Dean happy, that’s all. How old is Sam?”

“Twelve,” Missouri says, glancing towards the stairs as though if she wills it, she can summon him. “Mr Novak, look, Sammy has school and friends here, he’s real smart, I just don’t think…”

“I’ll help him with whatever he needs,” Castiel assures. “He’ll go to the best schools in the city, he’ll make new friends and he’ll have his brother how he should be.” Castiel shrugs. “He will go without want, because I will give them both everything.”

No-one can argue with that. Except Dean apparently, he looks about ready to—face ruddy with unspoken disagreements—but Missouri must have at least offered the basic of training, because he doesn’t utter a peep.

Missouri sighs. “Dean, baby, go and fetch your brother, will you?” She turns to Castiel, “I’m assuming you want them as soon as possible?”

“There’s a flight leaving before eleven, I would like to catch it.”

She nods gravely, glancing guiltily at Dean. “Go and pack, kiddo, tell your brother.”

“Dean will not need anything with him,” Castiel intercepts, glancing where he’s stalled by the stairs, wide eyed. “I will provide for you, Dean. As is tradition, you will be entering my home with yourself and nothing else. I can take care of you, omega.”

Dean looks like a chastised dog when he skulks out of sight upstairs, but Castiel’s not worried. He will, after all, take very good care of his omega.

They return downstairs in under an hour—the sixty-thousand dollars cheque signed and handed over; Dean carrying a suitcase that doesn’t appear to be his, so Castiel doesn’t worry about a punishment—followed groggily by a smaller boy ( _small, at least for his age_ ) with a milky scent marred by the times of a pup, which would explain the height. He hasn’t matured, but Castiel can already tell he won’t be an omega. He’s too quick to meet his eyes.

“Hello,” Castiel offers, holding out a hand for the lad to take. He does, but his eyes are on Dean.

“Hi.”

“I’m sure this must be confusing,” Castiel says, utterly unsure himself. “And I’m sorry that this has turned up so late, but…” he sighs and glances at a swollen faced Dean ( _Sam has wet patches on his shoulder, Castiel will remedy going to his brother for comfort in the weeks to come_ ). “You will want for nothing, Sam. I will ensure both you and your brother are more than taken care of. I’m sure Dean’s filled you in?”

Sam nods, shaggy hair ruffled into his eyes, and Dean nonchalantly pushes it back. He doesn’t appear to have noticed his actions, and Castiel’s once again appeased he didn’t split these two up. He has every right, but he’s not heartless. Especially having met Sam, he couldn’t do such an evil thing to either of them.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, before looking shortly, wearily over to Missouri. He turns back to Castiel. “You won’t hurt him, right? You won’t hurt Dean.”

Castiel smiles. “Not without good reason.”

Sam nods.

The goodbyes are dry on the boy’s end—through sheer will alone, Castiel’s sure—but Missouri’s sobbing all over them within the first hug. Castiel raises a brow at her over Sam’s shoulder and she sobers up somewhat with a quick rub to each boy’s head.

Dean’s trembling again by the time they get outside, and considering it’s the middle of summer in Kansas, Castiel can safely assure it’s not from the cold. It’s both exhilarating and gut wrenching to watch this little thing so terrified over his fate when not even two hours ago he was smiling cockily whilst stealing a candy bar. Castiel won’t have him cocky again, but he won’t have him this despondent, either. The boy deserves more than that.

“Boys…” he starts, once Sam’s tucked in the back and Castiel has managed to coax Dean beside him with suggestive noises and a very obvious hint in holding the passenger door open for him. They’re on a main road and Castiel has opened a window for the dark to offer something other than imposing alpha on them both and to release himself with a very distressed omega. He wants to touch Dean. He doesn’t really dare. “I know you won’t trust me for a while yet, it’s alright. I know you will at some point. But for now I you need to understand that no harm will come to either of you whilst you are at my home. Everything inside my walls are for you to use—though I do insist you stay out of my study unless I explicitly invite you in—but you aren’t prisoners. Dean, of course, will be given an extra set of rules, but none will be cruel. They will be for your benefit Dean, I promise. It’s okay.”

Dean shuffles closer to the door without responding, and Castiel turns off on the roundabout.

“Can I ask you a question?” Sam chimes from the back about thirty minutes into the drive.

“Anything you’d like.”

“Why am I here?”

Castiel eyes him in the rear-view and meets curious, narrowed hazel eyes beneath a hem of soft chestnut hair. “It would have been cruel to separate you, and considering how hard I’m sure this is on Dean anyway, I wasn’t willing to hurt him even more. I’m sure you wouldn’t have been eager to watch him leave with a strange alpha either?”

Sam shakes his head and the car falls silent again.

“What do you do…Cas?”

“Cas is fine. I’m a cardiovascular surgeon at the UC hospital in San Diego, which is where I,” Castiel smiles, “ _we_ live.”

“Hearts, right?” Sam asks, leaning forward in his seat.

“Yes, hearts and the blood system,” to put it in extremely layman terms. “Though I was a general surgeon for a few years before.”

“Why’d you change?”

Castiel shrugs and understands what Missouri meant about Sam being a ‘smart kid’. He’s very inquisitive, that’s for sure. Castiel never really gave much thought ( _in the two minutes he had to think on it_ ) to bringing up a twelve year old boy outside of _feeding_ him, but if Sam really is a clever boy and Dean’s really that good at caring for him, it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. Hopefully.

“Pay, mostly,” Castiel says, cringing. He understands how that makes him look. “The opportunity arose for me to begin studying, and I took it. It’s a difficult job, but I don’t regret it.”

“Yeah,” Sam hums. “So you’ll, uh, be going to work soon, huh?”

“Actually,” as luck would have it, the universe is working well today, “I am returning home from a hospital conference in Missouri. After this I have two weeks holiday, so I will be here for all of Dean’s heat and enough for you both to settle in, and ensure you manage school alright.”

Dean flinches in his seat and hugs his legs towards himself, curling smaller. Castiel smiles fleetingly at him, offering sympathy. He would offer his scent, but he’s not trusting Dean enough that he won’t simply attack him and drive the car from the road they’re currently driving.

“Oh,” Sam says in a dawning realization. “That’s why you were in Kansas then. Just passing through?”

“Yes,” Castiel agrees. “I boarded a flight to Kansas international and I was on my way to return the rental car for the flight. We missed the one I was going to get, but I think it was full anyway.”

“Sorry,” Sam murmers.

“It’s alright, Sam. This way we’re more likely to get seats all together.”

Silence for ten more minutes and signs for Kansas International start appearing along the roadside.

“Dean hates flying,” Sam says.

Dean scowls round at him and growls, baring his teeth. Castiel levels him with a warning look before he snaps the aggression off and mewls huffily at him, but Sam’s already leaning forward and poking his head through the middle of their seats. “You are, though,” he insists, nudging at his grumpy brother. When Dean ignores him, he edges closer and rests his nose against Dean’s elbow. “I was just saying.”

“We can drive, if you’d prefer Dean?” Castiel offers, going slower now they’re so close, just in case Dean really is against the aeroplane situation. “It will take a lot longer—you might be in heat on the road, but…”

But the omega shakes his head glumly and pushes his brother off, offering them both a hopeless, stubborn little glance, before glaring back through the window. His emerald eyes trace a plane soaring above them, just taking off, and he says loosely, “S’fine. Flying’s fine.”

It’s not, apparently. The second they make it through customs, Dean’s smelling like Castiel’s just stolen him straight from his nest with the threat looming of rape and murder. People stare and Dean looks about ready to pass out from the unwanted attention and fear of what’s about to happen. When Castiel offers his scent and tugs a twitching omega to his throat, it just makes it worse for a few tough minutes, before Sam flicks him and Dean relents his comfort with a keen, sinking into Castiel’s chest.

It feels unbearably good, having him so close, and Castiel wonders idly just how close to his heat Dean really is. An alpha offering himself ignites heats ( _Christ, especially the Mating Heat_ ) like that, and if they don’t get Dean home now, they’re all screwed. There’s enough alpha’s on the plane to make this a real problem. Castiel would hate to bite Dean without the comfort of a heat and his alpha’s knot.

Dean’s practically in Castiel’s lap by the time they take off, and their departure and flight is filled with murmurs of ‘poor little thing’ and ‘Christ, have you smelt him?’ and Castiel has never spent so long on a plane glaring at strangers.

Too many flight attendants offer something or other to take Dean’s edge off, but Castiel denies each and every one. He will not be mating anyone with Omega Sedative pills in their system. He wants Dean even _slightly_ aware of Castiel’s knot, for god’s sake.

Dean curls Sam close when they walk to Castiel’s Lexus RX, and pulls pleading green orbs on Castiel when he nods to climb beside him in the backseat. He relents only because Dean still smells utterly wrecked.

Dean’s in heat, inevitably, by the time they pull up to Castiel’s drive. He’s all but rutting himself against the leather seats about as subtly as he can manage whilst holding in desperate pants and heavy keens, Castiel assumes because he’s still curled beside his brother. He’s sure Dean wouldn’t enjoy fingering himself open with Sam sat right there, even if his body’s torturing him for it.

Castiel makes quick work of showing them his home. Actually, all he offers is Sam to explore whilst he’s taking care of Dean upstairs, and he nods Sam to his new bedroom far enough away that Dean’s screams won’t be heard.

The omega’s too far out of it to register his brothers departure outside of glancing into Sam’s new room, and he’s leaning heavily against Castiel by the time they make it to their own.

“There we go, omega, good boy,” Castiel supplies, soothing breathes into Dean’s hair. The boy keens and rubs his ass against the meat of Castiel’s thigh where he’s walking behind him—Castiel almost stops breathing when the slick melted through Dean’s jeans rub against his own.

The boy’s undressed and trembling unsurely in the middle of Castiel’s bedroom within seconds.

Castiel watches and wonders.

He’ll have to get a new bed. His current one—angled in the center of the room with only the head against the wall—will never do at keeping his omega happy and satiated. He’ll need curtains, at least, covering the whole of the bed; Dean will need to scent mark the room once his own scent is back to normal. Once he smells like Castiel’s and not some unmated little pup.

Oh god, his hole will be the perfect shade of pink, all glistening in the lamp light and fresh…

Dean interrupts him with a saddened expression and a high-pitched whine.

Right. Back to the now.

Castiel strips his own clothes off to offer his omega a sense of composure and animalistic instinct, and Dean rewards him by offering his own pale throat, vibrating in a suggestive trill. Castiel grins at it from his meters away, and motions for him to come closer, urging with his hands.

When Dean still looks unsure about it, shuffling on his delicate little feet, Castiel concludes something, and moves towards the bathroom beside him, beckoning Dean on.

He goes quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Dean is practically kidnapped, guys. Castiel takes him from his home kicking and screaming with the only consent being from his guardian, who he thought he could trust.  
> Also, the start of his heat.


	2. Mate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.

Dean’s surprisingly pliable once Castiel gets him in the water. Perfect, dozy little noises keep making their way from his throat and erupt wetly against the underside of Castiel’s clavicle, dampening him. He was right, by the way. Dean’s mouth? Sensational. _Miraculous_. By god, it’s _perfect_.

“Good boy, hmm?” Castiel prompts lazily, the water heavy as it drops from his questing arm, arching the sponge up to Dean’s god-like face. The boy bows into it and emerald eyes flutter into hiding as he purrs his content. Castiel pushes his hair back, and marvels at how docile the little thing is. Barely any work at all, coaxing him into the bath, straddling Castiel’s lap and rutting into the bend of thigh to hip. Of course, he displayed the expected roles of jolting in surprise when Castiel reached a hand out for him; keening a startled little noise when his knee slipped haphazardly on the bottom of the porcelain tub and his nose collided sharply with Castiel’s shoulder but…he’s been the picture of obedient omega once Castiel palmed a hand to his sternum. Once Dean’s nose made its way ( _gently_ ) to his newly appointed alpha’s throat. Yes, he was _ideal_ after that.

“Can…can we…” comes a wondrous, timid voice against Castiel’s chest, and those giant peepers appear again to flit between one blue eye to the next. Castiel smiles for him and urges his query to go on. “Empty.” He says instead, dropping back to his alpha’s flesh, sucking in a sigh and breathing it out there, warm. “Fill me?”

And how is any alpha supposed to deny their omega that?

“Since you asked so nicely,” Castiel supplies, somewhat cheekily to the poor, desperate little thing ( _his hips are still undulating against Castiel’s own, he probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it_ ) seemingly latched like a barnacle to him. Not that that bothers him, of course. It’s good to know his omega’s safe and close and perfectly happy to be so.

A high pitched whine echoes the air when Castiel slithers two fingers to rest against the leaking, flushed little pucker of a hole between his omega’s legs, and a timid little cock juts up wantonly against his hipbone. Dean’s hands feel as delicate as a baby birds wings when they attempt for a grip on Castiel’s biceps, until one trails warmly down through the water the cling desperately to Castiel’s hipbone. Nails dig into his flesh, and he moans back at the boy.

Castiel only rubs at it first; one hand resting on the smooth of flesh between ribs and hip. Flush beneath the water, that magical slick dissipates before it can proclaim any kind of footing at all, floating off, viscous, into the water. That doesn’t stop Dean whining at him though. Doesn’t stop his pelvis rocking back into Castiel’s fingers.

So, because he’s soft and Dean is irreplaceable, Castiel offers the boy one finger and leaves it at that…well. Not quite ‘leaves it’. It’s pad ruts into the softened channel just a little ( _holy_ fuck _, so tight_ ) pulsing gently in out, in out, just so he can edge that little deeper every time and inch towards his omega’s goal. Dean practically cheers him on in a serenade of chitters and whines. High pitched keens bitten off into Castiel’s throat. Not literally of course. The poor omega wouldn’t dare mark his brand new alpha so close off the bat; not without an alpha mark on his own skin first. Lucky for him, the poor thing won’t have to wait long. Castiel intends to reward him.

“Tell me, sweetheart,” Castiel murmurs into the heavy air. “Tell me how it feels.”

Omegas are obedient little things, there’s absolutely no doubt about it. But shove them into a heat ( _a_ mating _heat_ ) and obedience isn’t just a trait any longer; it isn’t something they’ve been taught by a strict society to do. It’s a _need_. A burning, aching need deep down within them—coiling promisingly right where they need it most; the heat in their loins. And yes, alright, they do grow an edge of timidness not all of them might feel outside of heat ( _they need self-protection somewhere along the line_ )—but what a lot of alphas don’t understand is that right now, omegas are _designed_ to feel good. Every little amp up from their already docile personality feels like peace on earth once they’ve been submerged into a heat; every little command obeyed, every soft touch their alpha awards. Christ, considering what they spend their week doing, Castiel should think so, they get pleasure from it. Libido goes up, pain goes down; sensation sky rockets. Obedience offers security. Dean’s lucky Castiel knows that. And is more than willing to assist it as well as he’s able.

And just like example number one, Dean pants his reply like _that_ to Castiel’s neck, “Good, good,” he says, rutting both closer for friction against his pink-stained cock and back for Castiel’s finger to enter deeper. “No-one’s… _ever_ touched me before,” he pants. Like that’s not blaringly obvious, but Castiel rewards him with nudge to the prostate anyway. Dean keens in reply, his lips curved in a crude smile against his clavicle where it’s slid. He nibbles haltingly at the skin there. “Never ever felt so good, alpha. Warm and, and, and _soft_.”

Poor thing. Castiel’s caught between hoping non-heat Dean forgets this particular scenario, considering how humiliated he’ll inevitably be; and remembering everything and blushing his annoyance out at Castiel, ruining his beautiful face with a petty scowl.

“Safe, little pup?” Castiel asks.

Dean moves his lips upwards until he can nuzzle at the edge of Castiel’s own and spread them in a dozy grin. Castiel smiles back. “Yeah. Feels real nice. C-can we always feel like this? Don’t like feeling scared--makes me smell all... _weird_ , I think. S’what Sammy says, anyway. You feel real safe, Cas-ti...Cas…”

Castiel presses a kiss to his cheek. “Cas is perfect, sweet-boy. And I’m glad,” he adds a second finger and Dean thrashes in the water, “I can make you feel good. I’m glad you feel safe. Would you like me to knot you Dean?”

Big green eyes blink up at him then, and Castiel’s entire left side feels bare after such wonderful ministrations. Dean keeps staring widely at him though, as if he’s surprised. As if Castiel wouldn’t knot him with all this slick in such an abundance. “Yeah,” Dean says quickly. He grins sloppily again. “Please.”

“Yes,” Castiel soothes, smiling. He palms a hand down the side of his omegas pure little face, pressing a quick peck to his lips before retrieving his fingers ( _revelling quickly in the haughty whine Dean gives_ ) and offering his boy a hand in standing. “Maybe the bed is a little more comfortable, hmm?”

Dean, apparently, agrees. He stands quickly, waiting still slightly submerged by the water for Castiel to follow his suit and reach for an oversized towel to wrap around his trembling boy, rub it up and down his arms and nearly have an aneurism from the obscene jut of his penis. He helps Dean from the tub before drying himself quickly on his own towel.

( _He’ll have to buy Dean-specific toiletries the next time he goes into town—he could take the boys with him, once the heat has cleared and Dean smells like his. Maybe some slick pads for his next heat so he doesn’t leak all over everything if Castiel allows him downstairs. Toothbrush, omega specific soap. Dean can choose whatever he’d like; so can Sam. Clothes. Books. Everything they want, Castiel will give them._ )

The little omega spreads himself nicely ( _if not just a little unpractised, which is wonderful by Castiel_ ) out on the duvet quickly enough; his skinny limbs tripping from beneath him in a haste that obscenely reminds Castiel of a very sexy, knot inducing Bambi. It makes Castiel imagine Dean pressing slim fingers into his own hole ( _he can’t imagine Dean’s pride stretches far enough for him to ask his ‘Mama Missouri’ for a fake knot_ ) and watching omegas spreading out for their alphas on glammed up beds and dungeons ( _Dean would look_ wonderful _tied up_ ), lying in some perfect alternative to Dean’s surrender right now. Yes, Castiel wants Dean to remember this. Maybe later he can help the little thing to correct it.

Right now, though, Castiel sidles up behind him and trails a hand over one soft curve of ass. Glistening right in the crevice with newly forming slick that smells like…like heaven incarnated. That wonderful _sweetness_ enough to drive any alpha to their knees for the boy, and by god, he will be on his knees. Once his bite has taken and Dean’s long softened on his knot, Castiel will bow to his knees and lick his boy spotlessly clean and coax the next layer of slick to form. He will do that.

“How did you learn this pose, little one?” Castiel asks carefully, pushing two thumbs into the dip of his ass’ cheeks and spreading them slightly, offering Dean’s pretty pink hole ( _Castiel knew it_ ) up to the air. Dean flinches from the chill, but moans anyway. Castiel watches his fingers dig into the comforter.

“Saw it sometimes,” he says quietly, voice quick. Castiel watches the blush ( _oh fuck, his omega can get embarrassed even like this, on his hands and knees ready to be fucked—how adorable is that?_ ) creep from the dip of his spine all the way to his neck and brighten his ears with it. He’d follow it with his fingers, but they’re still occupied by Dean’s bubbling little hole. “On videos. And, and practice it in heat.”

There it is again, that obedience. Sure, Deans utterly mortified right now, but beyond that, right where the pleasure lies, his base omega is panting and rutting at thin air. It’s Castiel’s duty to show that to him.

“Did you have a knot, Dean?” he asks, though he already knows the answer. The boy clearly hasn’t had more than a few fingers up here in heat. Castiel’s guessing it hurt too much for that.

Dean looks round at him sharply anyway, letting that posture dip just a little. Castiel offers a hand beneath his chest to right it, but he keeps on staring. “No,” he insists, once he’s back where he should be. His head falls between his arms. “I’ve never had any...an alpha… _sir_.” Oh good god above, “No-one’s knotted me.”

Castiel shushes him above an internal litany of horny sobs. “Hush, my beautiful little thing. I know no alpha has touched you, it’s alright. I simply meant in heat. When you were in heat, did Missouri get you a knot to help you through? A plastic one.”

“Oh,” Dean mutters, his body evaporating from the tense set of his muscles. “No. Never asked, I guess. Tried other stuff, but… _hurt_ with too much...in there.”

Castiel coos him as he presses a  swift kiss to the scrawny meat of his hip. “Baby, I bet it did. A few fingers can’t have been enough for a wet heat though, can it? You must have been bursting at the seams.”

Dean nods his head, self-deprecating and desperate. Castiel smiles at him. “We can remedy that, can’t we, little bird? Climb up the bed for me, sweetheart, I can give you what you need.”

Dean does, and Castiel wonders if obeying so instantly felt as good as the books all say it does. Dean’s rolling his hips by the time Castiel crawls up behind his perfect little backside, so he’ll guess it’s close enough. Maybe later he can ask him.

“S’it gonna hurt, alpha?” Dean mewls beneath his breath. “Always hurt before.”

Castiel’s alpha spits at the thought of his little dove keening in desperation on his own duvet, desperate for a deeper release but unable to achieve it from _pain_ of all things. He shouldn’t be in pain. Castiel won’t let him be.

“Initially, maybe,” Castiel says, lowering to press soft kisses to Dean’s freckled back. Dean whines. “But I won’t let it for long, alright? I’ll make you feel like heaven, sweetheart, I promise. Do you want me to use my fingers first, Dean?”

Hopefully not. Omegas usually balk at the idea of fingers or false knots being the things that break their virginity seal—at least outside of heat, of course—much preferring the base pleasure of their alphas cock splitting the way, then their knot sealing the deal. Their teeth signing it off.

“No,” Dean rumbles out. “Not right with fingers,” and Castiel’s alpha soars. “Knot me?”

“Fuck, yes Dean,” Castiel growls, rearing up. His hips meet with Dean’s and his cock slides along his boys dripping cleft. “We’ll go slow, alright?”

Dean nods.

Slow. Slow and calming for his delicate little bird, of course. So Castiel runs his hand through the abundance of slick excreting from the pitiful little thing before him, rubbing the quality of it through his fingers for a second, before coating it over his cock and teasing the slit. Just because he can, really. Because if something doesn’t offer him release any second, he’ll knot thin air and what use will that be? None. Not for his desperate little dove.

Castiel does go slow, but by Dean’s pained whine, it doesn’t make much of a difference. His hands are rooted as gently as they can be on his boy’s hips as he guides his cock where it should be, massaging his thumbs into the rigid jut of bone, before he nudges just the head, nothing more, to the opening. It’s only when he pushes in, just that inch, just until the catch of his head pulls on Dean’s sensitive rim, that Dean’s arms give out beneath him and he starts whining. Castiel presses his thumbs to the pressure point at Dean’s tailbone, which seems to sooth him just a little, until he starts moving again.

“Dean, little one, do you need me to stop?” he’s trembling the poor thing. Castiel keeps his head inside ( _it won’t do to go_ back _on their process_ ), but leans forward and whispers his words in Dean’s ear.

“No,” the boys says stubbornly. “No, no, do it, please.”

Castiel kisses the nape of his neck, a promise for when Castiel knots him. “Tell me to stop, little bird. Ask me and I will.”

Dean nods.

As strategy goes, Castiel just tries to push in as far as Dean’s body will allow him before pulling out a little and trying again. He gets through about three solid thrusts before Dean’s air collapses from him and another keen echoes into the air. He doesn’t stop, though. He trusts Dean ( _in this state now more than ever_ ) to let him know if the pain is bad enough for Castiel to stop his ministrations of his new love. When he peers down, a spot of blood has leaked onto the top of Castiel’s penis, but that’s not unexpected. So he lowers one hand—the other still firmly on that pressure point, ensuring Dean stays relaxed—and thumbs around his swollen opening, already darkening from that precious pink. The poor thing moans again, but Castiel thinks it’s more a _consideration_ of what he’s feeling rather than full out pain. That’s a start, isn’t it?

It takes another four or so thrusts before Dean starts to smell happy again, beneath the cloud of tenseness and heat. Another two, and Castiel’s whole length can be buried, right to the slowly knotting hilt, and Dean starts mewling out happily, tiny chitters croaked into the air.

It’s not long after Dean starts whining for more that Castiel’s knot really begins to form, starts catching against the rim and eliciting little hitches in his boy’s breath. But when it starts to grow too big to just pump in and out, that’s when Dean’s fuss really kicks up. And that’s exactly when Castiel doesn’t need him to.

“Won’t…won’t go in, alpha, _stop it_ ,” he cries, voice rough with pain and tears—still edged in pleasure though, which is what Castiel clings to. “ _Hurts!_ ”

“Hush, Dean, shh, baby,” Castiel soothes, petting him down as he forces just that little extra into the clamp that is now suddenly Dean’s body. “It’ll feel good in just a second, calm down for me, little one.”

“No,” Dean sobs. His body must be aching with the refusal of submission and trying to expel the knot, no matter how much he’s really craving it. “Please stop it, please don’t…”

“Dean,” Castiel finally snaps. The boy goes limp beneath him. “The longer you struggle, the longer it will hurt you. Now I have asked you to obey me, little bird, and that is exactly what I expect you to do.” His hand is taut on the back of his omega’s neck—he’s not entirely sure when it got there, somewhere between getting irritated with the boys insistence and snapping at him—but it seems to be working well enough. He, of course, smells aggravated by the insistence ( _wild, wonderful little thing he is_ ), but his limbs do soften some, and his channel loosens just enough for Castiel to push entirely inside. Dean doesn’t make a murmur but Castiel knows he wants to.

Castiel waits, reluctantly, for the boy to finally start pulling him inside, rather than exclude him, for his channel to get with the program and assist Castiel’s knot in orgasm they will both enjoy so long as he’s in properly. And when Dean finally, _finally_ ruts back into him, Castiel comes loud and long, spilling his seed into the boy and plunging his teeth into the soft meat of his neck. Dean howls, but then he’s coming too, and everything explodes tenfold.

The little dove sleeps, after that. Still knotted, he curls against Castiel’s chest when he turns them and chatters his dreamy little breaths.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

They move Dean into another spare room once the beta’s come in to fix up the main bed. The little omega spends the vast majority of his first day in there scenting at everything like a timid little pup, glaring daggers at Castiel between mewling on his knot, and enjoying the hell out of his little brother. Who barely leaves his big brother’s side unless he’s sleeping, fucking his alpha or showering stubbornly without Castiel. Which won’t do, of course. Not once his heat isn’t marring his judgement, Dean will not behave like he rules the roost once Castiel has a right to hold precedence over a clearly thinking young boy. The second he comes round to himself officially, Castiel’s forcing a lesson or two to _stick_.

Sam, on the other hand, is perfectly amiable ( _much to Dean’s annoyance_ ). He’ll help Castiel in the kitchen, letting the alpha in on Dean’s favourite meals so he can at least _try_ to appease the impossible thing; and he’ll nod silently if Castiel comes into their space having sensed Dean’s need again, leaving them to it. As much as Dean seems to be appalled by his baby brothers ‘betraying’ actions, Castiel can’t help but be pleased by them.

Dean’s heat breaks on the exact same morning as Sam’s first day of school. Castiel insists he stay in bed—maybe get himself accustomed to the main bedroom, now that his scent is back to normal ( _and amplified with Castiel’s, thank you_ ) and he can mark it to his heart’s content—but he just shakes his head sullenly and crawls into the front seat of the car, dressed in nothing but Castiel’s jacket ( _at least he’s not stubborn enough to deny his latent heat-need for that_ ) and the now washed pair of jeans he arrived in. Maybe this weekend they can all go into the city and pick out some more clothes? Dean especially. Once Castiel lets him have that indulgence back again, of course.

Dean doesn’t walk with them to take Sam into the building—Castiel insists and Dean doesn’t seem too bothered considering the way he’s curled so tightly into himself—but he does kiss his brother on the cheek out the window.

Once Castiel gets back outside—sure Sam’s settled, of course—he’s half expecting to find an empty car. But Dean’s still sat in there, fiddling idly with the zipper on Castiel’s jacket, utterly ignoring his alpha the second he re-enters the car; although he must sense he tension because he does glance over just slightly when Castiel starts the engine, and his limbs do flex into the windbreaker stubbornly. But Castiel’s waiting until they return home for this punishment.

“Take off your clothes, Dean,” Castiel demands, the second Dean’s toe steps past him over the threshold and the door’s locked behind them. He ushers Dean into the living room. “Now.”

The boy looks utterly traumatised, jade eyes darting around like Sam might pop up and make some excuse to save him from big bad, angry alpha.

“But I’m…” he says, voice taut. He hugs the jacket closer to him. “I’m not in heat anymore and I’m…I’m _sore_ ,” as if that could stop Castiel anyway, if that’s what this were about. Silly child he is. “I’m not doing anything with you.”

Castiel takes that ominous step closer, and Dean startles away, feet scampering like a slightly less sexy Bambi. “I have no interest in your hole right now, Dean. Take of your clothes. I won’t ask again.”

Emerald orbs widen in seeming understanding, and Dean manages to get his body safely behind one of the couches, clinging to it, before Castiel can order anything again. “You promised,” he whines, voice wet. “You told them you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“No, Dean,” Castiel growls. He stays exactly where he is because Dean doesn’t deserve Castiel’s attention to play ‘stalking’. Castiel isn’t playing a game with him. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you without good reason. You’ve been rude to me, in my own house, Dean. I’ve been putting up with it during your heat. I allowed you to come today because Sam was nervous about his first day and he wanted his brother. And now, Dean, I’m fed up. Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”

Castiel can feel the hummingbird pulse of his own little bird’s heart from here, his own perfect mate. But he will be punished now, otherwise he will never learn.

“One,” Castiel counts. “Two.”

Dean bolts, which isn’t surprising. Legs it in the direction of the stairs, but if he’s really naïve enough to think that the alpha wouldn’t catch him, then he needs to read up on his biology. Alphas are predators. Their sixteen year old, mated omegas are their prey. He barely makes it three leaps before Castiel’s wrapped around him, yanking the frail frame of his omega to is chest, holding him as still as the little thing will let him, all flailing limbs and reluctant cries. He’s sobbing by the time Castiel’s unzipped his jacket.

“Get the hell off o’ me!” by the time Castiel moves onto his jeans. And the second Castiel wrestles him down to lay across his lap on an armchair, he’s sobbing unrelentingly against the leather arm and twisting about in his alpha’s grip. “Please, please, please…” he heaves.

“Hush,” Castiel orders harshly. He wheedles his hand up to the boy’s clavicle, where he saw Missouri palm to force the omega into calming, pressing against the bone and relaxing somewhat when the boy does too. “I will not use rape as a punishment, Dean, not ever. But I _will_ punish you. Until Saturday, you will kneel by my side, and you will be naked, do you understand me?”

“Fuck you…”

“Quiet. Any more obscenities and I will extend each one by a day, understood?” Dean growls, and Castiel taps his bare backside smartly, inspiring a solid yelp. “If you obey me, Dean, we won’t have a problem. For God’s sake, little one, if you _respect_ me, we won’t have a problem. But right now, you’re barely welcome inside my house, omega. Now I’m not willing to be without my mate. Are you?”

There’s a bitter pause there, before Dean groans out beneath him, voice mashed by the leather chair, “No.”

Castiel smiles, only willing to do so because he knows the stubborn mule stretched over his lap can’t see him and take control over that smile. Instead, for Dean, he rubs over the mark he just struck, before slapping down another.

Dean cries out. “Wait, wait,” he pants, trying once more to twist in Castiel’s grip. The alpha growls, but he barely relaxes back. “Just wait, please. Don’t hit me. I’ll be better, okay? I’ll fucking obey you or whatever, just don’t hit me, please. I’m sorry.”

Another ringing slap. Dean jerks forward and whines. “ _Please!_ ”

“Relax, Dean,” Castiel insists, pushing the boy’s head down. He slaps again, the other cheek, and Dean yips against it.

“How the hell,” slap, “can I relax when you’re,” slap, rub, “ _ow!_ Fucking doing that, fuck,” slap, “ _please stop it!_ ”

He’s crying after the seventh, and Castiel wonders whether it’s the pain ( _unlikely, he wasn’t slapping him hard_ ) or the humiliation; the _shame_ of being admonished by his own alpha after not even a week in his home. The latter, Castiel presumes.

And he’s trembling by the tenth, but quiet. Curling into Castiel by the twelfth, fighting through the slaps to burrow his face against his alpha’s shirt and sob there, shivering to his heart’s content. Castiel stops then. Once Dean’s given in his outrage for the time being ( _Castiel’s not ignorant enough to believe it’s anything more than a temporary offer of pain release_ ) he tucks his little monster close again, and offers his throat for scenting. Dean complies, of course, dampening his skin as he goes, face stained in tears. But he doesn’t complain or say anything really.

And when Castiel goes and picks Sam up a few hours later, he leaves Dean to his scent-marking in the main bedroom, curling his way into the sheets and leaving behind the citrus and fig-leaf scent.

Which is good. The boy’s learning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> serious dub/non-con warnings for Dean's heat. Somewhere in there is also full on non-con because Dean says explicitly 'NO'.  
> non-consensual spanking as punishment.


	3. Hatred

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.

Dean Winchester once thought hatred was a concept he was vastly familiar with. I thought he hated flying even more than he loved Sammy; he thought he hated their Dad and Uncle Bobby for ditching out and abandoning them. He thought he hated…a lot of things. Shitty town, crappy gender, no one giving two fucks about them, but since then Dean has learned that he was wrong about all of that stuff. Because hatred? That’s exactly what _this_ is.

Trembling from fear in his new bed that reeks of alpha and him and this stupid damn bite throbbing on his shoulder? That’s hatred. His ass, throbbing like it is and burning and the shame lacing its way through his entire body? Hatred. Some smarmy alpha dick who clearly thinks he can just…just _buy_ his way through life and not give two shits that some people don’t have money and some people don’t want to be ruled be an alpha and not all goddamn omega bitches _are_ actually bitches or fucking sluts and that some people want free will just because they don’t want spanking over said smarmy alpha dick’s laps just ‘cause…fuck, just ‘cause they don’t know the rules and what’s expected and Dean—

Dean can’t live like that. He’s pretty sure, actually, that he can’t handle this.

Society says he should. The world says that, yeah, actually, good little omegas _should_ be able to take petty little hits to the ass when they’re bad, and they _should_ be able to just _know_ and _obey_ without having to be asked and it _should_ all just be one big natural process, but who do they think makes up these rules, huh? Fucking alphas. Dumb fucking alphas like this one who think they understand omegas because when they fucking _buy_ one, they already know the rules and regulations and they know what their mates expect of them.

Yeah, well. Dad didn’t teach Dean. Uncle Bobby couldn’t stand when Dean sunk to his knees like school told him to or when he made ‘weird whiny noises’ on the rare occasions the man ever gave him praise—hell, neither of them could handle Dean’s sickly sweet smell.

Mama was the only one who cared and listened. She was the only one who calmed him when he panicked. She was the only one who made any kind of fuss ( _pointless thought it always was_ ) when the alphas at school touched him or taunted him and threatened that Dean would enjoy them whether he liked it or not which didn’t even make any sense—but Mama was the one who kicked up the fuss. She was the one who pulled him out of the shitty damn school when the principal just laughed in her face and she never even… _suggested_ that the reason why was to find Dean a mate and even though he considered that might be a possibility and it made him have nosebleeds he was so terrified—she never did it. And Dean relaxed. He convinced himself that she never would, that he was safe with her and a dowry was just some far off threat he never had to worry about.

He was wrong. Society was right.

Alphas win again.

The thing is, though…Dean’s thought about having a mate since he first read about what one was as some naïve little pup. He used to dream about them in heat and get wet and mewl for a soothing touch and warm hands and wet lips telling him he was wanted, finally.

No one ever hurt him in his dreams though. No one ever told him he had to obey and he had to kneel by their side as some sort of contorted punishment. No one took away his clothes.

But he shouldn’t be surprised, right? Ever since he presented people have treated him like some wilting flower; trampling straight on top of him because they couldn’t care less or offering to hold the weight he needs to carry because they think he’s never going to be strong enough to hold it. Dean…Dean could hold his brother though. Dean could always sleep in a bed that didn’t have a canopy before and he could take his Dad’s drink away when he passed out on the couch and he could take the broken arm he once got for those efforts. He could take the unhappy betas for angering at his obedience and he could take the strain it took to defy any instincts and build some up of his own. And Dean could handle being passed around, unwanted, and he could soothe his baby brother when he asked Dean if it was all his fault, and whether he could just stop being so babyish.

Dean can handle things, okay?

He’s learnt.

He’s obeyed.

He’s…he’s been punished.

But this…this is permanence and permanence tastes bitter and painful and wrong and not how Dean dreamt of it at all.

Permanence feels like warm hands that soothe him when he cries after making him sob in the first place.

Permanence smells like _mated_ and _alpha_ and that vague familiar scent of…that ocean or coastal something scented candle that Mama used to light in his room after a bad heat or a nightmare or whenever he crawled to her room for warmth and comfort.

Permanence feels like shit. And Dean hates it.

And you know, maybe the worst thing isn’t all of that; maybe it isn’t losing the only person that ever seemed to really understand Dean and maybe it isn’t this new threat that thinks this should all just be a piece of cake for him.

Maybe it’s just that Sammy doesn’t actually give a shit. Maybe… _Christ_ , maybe it’s that Sam talks to the alpha-threat like Dean’s not stood right there and it could definitely be that he rolls his eyes at Cas-Casti-something when Dean groaned at his next heat-wave and didn’t want to be fucked six ways from Sunday again. Dean thinks it’s definitely to do with Sam. That Sam doesn’t care that this is hurting him more than he thinks he could ever explain in words; that Dean is more scared than he was when that alpha stripped him that one time and Dean couldn’t stop crying for two weeks solid—or when Dad went mental and kept yanking at Dean’s wrist and screaming at him and Dean had to spend the night in hospital and wear a cast on his arm for six whole weeks.

Sam knows fear from him; he’s scented it and moaned about it on him, told him it’s distracting and Dean needs to just forget about it. He’ll say that again if Dean told him how bad this situation is. He’d say “Cas isn’t bad, Dean,” again like yesterday and he’ll roll his eyes and palm at Dean’s hair. He’ll just say “You need an alpha, Dean, you know you do,” the same way he did when Dean came sobbing to him that night at Missouri’s and told him Mama was happy to just sell him to some _stranger_.

And Dean doesn’t care that it felt like _rightness_ when those teeth sank into his flesh.

He just…he just doesn’t care.

So he stays on the bed when he hears the stupid expensive car ( _he misses the Impala like no one would believe_ ) pull up outside the bedroom window and Sam’s gleeful little voice threading its way through the unobstructed glass. At least that sounds good, right? Dean should be grateful— _ecstatic_ —that Sammy’s okay with all of this. And it sure sounds like he’s enjoying his new school after the first day, and that’s great, isn’t it? Definitely. Dean just…isn’t feeling himself right now.

“Dean!” the alpha’s voice echoes up the stairs and into the bedroom and Dean flinches from its onslaught, but he doesn’t move. He shuffles in the soft grip of the blankets beneath him and he nuzzles deeper into the down, but he doesn’t run to the door, fly down the stairs and leap into his alpha’s arms like the bastard expects him to, because that’s not Dean. That’s not the omega he paid sixty _thousand_ dollarsfor and maybe he should have thought about that before splashing the cash. Asshole. Overcompensating for the size of his kno—well. Not entirely true, because actually his knot is more than big enough, thank you very much, but he’s overcompensating for something, that’s for sure. What with his fancy-ass car and gigantic house and spending so much on a runt of an omega like Dean. Dick. Deserves debt for taking such little care of his money when other people like Mama ( _not anymore, she’s sixty grand up so at least Dean could give her that and not Dad or Uncle Bobby_ ) need it bad.

“Deeaaan!” Sam calls probably from right beside the alpha; voice impatient and happy and _that_ brings Dean’s attention up at least. Then again, if he’s stood beside the life-ruiner, how much attention can Dean really afford to give because they obviously want him downstairs and, really, there’s no way he— “Dean, stop sulking and come down!” …oh. Right. Dean’s, uh…Dean’s overreacting. Of course he is. “Cas says he’s gonna make tacos!”

Dean suddenly hates tacos with every fibre of his being and he fucking detests _Cas_. But if Sam’s asking him…he should go downstairs. He shouldn’t really leave Sam with that monster—he’s already wimped-out enough that he actually let the man _drive_ Sam without him there and he shouldn’t be leaving him under that threat. Besides. Sam’s going to want to talk about his day and _Castiel_ shouldn’t be the one to hear it. Dean’s his brother. It’s his job.

Huh. Cas didn’t even ask Dean if he was still in school, did he? He just assumed Dean would be his fulltime fuck-toy, didn’t he? Typical.

Dean’s so very fucking screwed.

“ _Dean_ ,” and if Dean ever heard a damn warning, that would be one and he’s up off the bed and scampering to the door before another threat can worm it’s way into his bones and leave itself there to rot.

He doesn’t even consider his nakedness until Sam’s finally in his view and he’s back and staring at him all wide-eyed, cheeks more than slightly blushed and he averts his gaze. Which is dumb, ‘cause…they _bathed_ together barely a week ago, and now he’s weird with Dean’s bareness? Weird timing, Sammy…

“Dean,” he sighs, rolling his eyes again and pinning the wall behind Dean’s head with a world-class bitch-face. “What did you do?”

…what did Dean do? What did _Dean_ do? Dean didn’t do fucking anything—it’s this bastard, this total asshole standing a few metres behind Sam that did something and if Sammy were there when they…when they had their _disagreement_ , he wouldn’t be asking what Dean’s done, he’d be shouting at Castiel and stealing his phone and hiding Dean in the bathroom and calling the police or at least Mama or Dad. He’d understand that this guy is damn crazy and he’s making Dean walk around _naked_. It’s…fucking barbaric!

And Dean doesn’t even care that he’s gaping at his little brother or that there is no way that Castiel can’t see the way his bottom lip’s totally _not trembling_ and that he’s already been crying from the redness of his eyes. He doesn’t care because…this isn’t Dean’s fault.

He doesn’t…fuck, he doesn’t _understand_.

He wants Mama.

He wants his _home_.

“Dean and I had a little discussion is all, didn’t we, little one?” _Little one_. Dean’s not fucking _little_ but he’s definitely flinching away when the ominous alpha-ass takes one step too many towards him. He’s gonna hit him again, isn’t he? “We came to an agreement and Dean clothe-less was a part of it. So far he’s doing very well.”

Sam shoots him a glare and Dean can physically feel a fist ploughing straight into his chest and he wants to tell Sammy and assure him that Dean didn’t…he didn’t _do_ anything! No one told him how he should act and Castiel never laid down his rules, how the hell was Dean supposed to know?

He can’t. He can’t do this.

“Sam, would you take the bags into the kitchen for me? I would appreciate a quick chat with your brother, if that’s alright.”

Nope. No, it’s not alright, fuck you—

“Sure,” Sam says. Fuck. He leaves the hallway after shooting Dean a second warning glare and collects a few paper bags to take with him; disappearing round the corner in too soon a second.

Dean doesn’t look up at the alpha. Doesn’t know if he’s actually allowed to, but that’s barely the point. He doesn’t _want_ to.

“Look at me, Dean,” the bastard says, and isn’t that just damn typical. Dean doesn’t want to, he doesn’t _want_ to—he does, though. Because Sam really doesn’t need to see him bent over a chair and spanked, if only because it’s utterly mortifying. Maybe because it kinda hurts him and pissing an alpha off is a bad idea.

His eyes are just as blue as Dean thought they were and when Dean sucks in a breath, he can scent the ocean and the coast from that damn candle. He’s a head taller than Dean when he’s standing…fuck, _this close_ and his hands are warm and callused when they run a ‘soothing’ path up Dean’s biceps. Dean shivers and he doesn’t care.

“Good boy,” he says quietly, and Dean could murder the rush of appeasement that floods his chest, but he does ignore it well. He holds the alpha’s eyes because he’s been asked to, but…it’s a lot harder than he expected. It’s almost _aching_. “Are you cold, sweetheart?” he asks calmly.

Dean could say yes in a heartbeat, he knows he could. Maybe Castiel would give him a blanket or something and at least that might offer some sort of barrier between his flushed skin and prying eyes and he’s saying, “Yeah,” stubbornly before he can remember that he really shouldn’t lie to a mate.

Azure eyes narrow and Dean winces again, flinching from the sudden grip on his arms. “Are you, Dean?” he asks again and Dean wonders if there’s a possibility of him throwing up, before deciding that, yes, actually, he very well might.

So he shakes his head in appeasement and tries to slow his throbbing heart as it jackrabbits in his chest, stammering out a quick, “Sorry…s-sir, I just…I don’t like—”

“Hush, little bird,” he soothes again, and suddenly Dean’s face is chocked full of alpha neck and coast-scent and a pale blue shirt collar. His breath catches jaggedly and he wonders when it might be that he’ll be able to breathe again. Not yet…shit, not yet. He can’t even fucking _move_. “I know you don’t like being so bare, but it wouldn’t be a punishment if you did.” A quick thumb swipes over Dean’s cheek and the breath he was just struggling to catch is whipped away again, “It’s alright to cry, little one,” he soothes. A hand palms across the small of his back and his legs stop working. Lips press where he thumb just was and Dean recognises that he is…actually crying. Not sobbing, but his eyes are watering and he rarely lets them do that—maybe because…because his Alpha Mate told him it was okay to do? Maybe. Oh _god_.

“Hush, baby, it’s okay,” and Dean’s against him completely. Being held upright. Held…standing. He still smells like mate and Dean doesn’t know exactly what that smells like, but that’s what this alpha is and…it feels right, as much as that pains him to admit. He knows this is where he belongs, but that doesn’t mean it’s where he wants to be. “Good boy, Dean, you’re doing so well for me, I know it’s hard, it’s okay. Hush, little bird, hush. Shh.”

Dean’s not making a sound, but the _hushes_ and the _shh’s_ don’t stop for even a second as Dean lets his body go all loose and embarrassing and he sags down against his alpha. He shoves his face against the offered neck because…just because it smells really nice and Dean’s aching and he needs some sort of comfort because his omega’s kicking up one hell of a—

 _Oh_.

That…feels…real good. Yeah. Real, _real_ good. Dean didn’t…he didn’t really get all that before, but the hand now palming against his spine and those nimble fingers pushed deep into his mussed up hair…feels right. Maybe even better than Mama, which Dean hates to admit, but it kinda does. ‘Cause this scent right up in Dean’s nose and it’s the scent of the ocean and it feels like mate and good and maybe Dean stays against Cas’ side when he walks them to the kitchen and maybe he sits at his alpha’s side when he plonks Dean down into the stool and yeah, whatever, his nose stays buried in Castiel’s ribs when he’s cutting up onions and cooking the meat.

Sam pats him on the head, but Dean doesn’t pay him much attention. Because—

Dean doesn’t know. His head’s all fogged and the only clear thing is the warmth awarded to him and the scent of his mate. That’s all that matters, right?

Dean’s just…tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Dean's POV, so prepare for the angst. He's scared shitless. He's confused. He hates his new mate.


	4. Collar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> something akin to a panic attack on Dean's end, major angst from our boy.

“What do you think, Dean?”

…stupid fucking shop anyway who has a whole building just for omega crap it’s ridiculous and mortifying and a waste of damn money—

“Dean.”

—and collars should _not_ be for humans they should be banned and all DOGS ONLY written right on the side where everyone can see and dumb asshole alphas with big blue eyes should be arrested and their omegas should be allowed to go back to their families or change their fucking gender—

“Is he okay?”

—and stupid sales assistants with freaking _blue hair_ wouldn’t be allowed to sell collars like it’s a fashion statement because _certain people_ are betas and wouldn’t understand the implication and _certain people_ shouldn’t be wearing a collar anyway so clearly she’s fucking stupid—

“He’ll be fine. First collar; I’m sure it’s a little overwhelming.”

—and overwhelming is one giant understatement because Dean’s not overwhelmed he’s fucking terrified of the hand all steady and warm on the nape of his neck where a piece of impersonal and fuck-ugly fabric is soon going to take ownership; of that length of tall and sturdy alpha pressed tight against his side and smelling all _right_ and _painful_ and it’s not freaking fair because this can’t be happening and Dean can’t _do this_ , he can’t do this, he—

“Hey, sweetheart no, don’t do that to yourself, it’s okay. Shh, Dean, it’s okay. Good boy.” Yeah, good boy. _Good pet, goooood little Dean, let’s get you a collar and maybe a leash too, huh, go the whole nine yards because I’m gonna be treating you like some mangy mutt from now until your final breath, little one, even though you’re sixteen and really not little, you know, by any fucking stretch._

God, the omegas in the school yard would get one hell of a kick outta this, huh? Maybe it’s good, moving so far away. Least Dean doesn’t have to worry about bumping into someone from high school or, god forbid, _anyone he knows_.

Prancing around in a damn _collar_ , what the hell?

Oh, yep, here he goes again, not breathing. That’s what, his eleventh time since the whole spanking fiasco? Yeah. Eleven. Typical.

“Sam, would you take him outside for me, please?” Castiel asks, and fucking dismally, his hand leaves Dean’s throat bare once he retracts it and his body leaves a stupidly cold patch when he pushes Dean a little towards his brother. Dean yips, but it’s a far sight from the pained whine he has to stop himself from giving, so he’s counting that as a win. Besides, _Dean_ wants to be rid of this dick; it’s his stupid-ass-demanding-needy omega that needs him.

Sammy spins on his heels slightly with a frown, turning from the little pink bottle of massage oil in his hands to stare over at them for a second before placing it down again, and practically skipping on over to take precedence over his totally lost and pathetic big brother (big _brother_ ) who’s just stood in the middle of the stupid floor trembling and sucking in breaths like a complete and utter _freak_.

“Yeah, sure,” Sam replies. “We’ll just be on the steps.”

Dean curls into Sam once those blissfully familiar hands demand ownership on his wrist—tucking himself into that slim neck when he starts pulling Dean away from their most dangerous foe yet. He yips out his thanks into Sam’s ear as they move further and further from the threat and Dean can protect Sam better from all the way out here, he knows he can. And holy fuck, does fresh air feel good on his skin and the stares don’t matter anymore because Dean can barely see them anyway, what with the way his eyes are watering. Doesn’t matter ‘cause Sammy’s here now, right? Gonna make ‘em better, Dean totally knows…

Only…Sam stops, once they’re just outside of the shop. He pauses on the steps for a second, glaring round at a few nosy pedestrians, before he starts _tugging Dean down next to him_ , like they’re going to sit here and wait for that monster, right at their perfect opportunity to run, what the fuck—

“No, Dean,” Sam says sternly, tugging at his wrist harder and fucking threatening to pull his perfect scent away until they’re both just sinking to the concrete steps and Dean’s whining like some kind of animal and Sam’s pulling him to the familiar crook of his shoulder and stemming his inevitable tears. Fucking…they could be running right now! Sam even has that money Cas gave him ( _enough for two bus tickets, right?_ ), they could get out of the city—out of the state if they wanted to!

“Sam, _please_ ,” Dean starts, begging into his brother’s shirt collar. He coils closer and pushes their limbs tighter together, tucking their bodies where they should be, where they were before that bastard came along and ruined them both. “He’s still inside, we could go. Go back to Missouri. He _hurts_ , Sammy, _please_.”

And, once again, it’s Dean who gets looked at like he’s crazy. Sam going all wide eyed and staring like it’s _Dean_ who’s in there buying a collar for some underage, uneducated omega who is seriously not consenting to any of this. Yeah, o-fucking-kay.

Sam yanks his hands away from Dean’s grip, after that. He huffs out and glares over at Dean like none of that stuff is true—like Dean’s shoulder isn’t still throbbing from the bite that’s nearly a week old now and his knees aren’t completely killing him from all that kneeling without so much as a blanket keeping him from the cold, hardwood floors. Oh God. Not Sammy, too.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Sam says. Dean lowers his gaze and yips. No-one’s touching him now and it hurts. “Mama _sold_ you, Dean. What d’you think will happen if we just turn up on her doorstep? It’s the first place Cas’ll look.” He huffs out a sigh and stares up at a palm tree just opposite them, highlighting a store that looks like it’s for omega-specific clothes. Right. ‘Cause they don’t have enough of them around. “He wants you, Dean. And he wants me too, ‘cause he knows we won’t leave each other. Who else can we say that about?”

“He hit me,” and Dean’s voice is nothing more than a whimper, and it’s painful. It’s humiliating. “He wants me to wear a collar. Doesn’t let me wear clothes. S’embarrassing, Sammy.”

Sam rolls his eyes for the billionth time since they were dragged here, but he does reach out an arm and tug Dean to him again, and at least Dean can relax into that one. Least he can nuzzle his nose against his brother’s throat and insight an amused little giggle.

He sighs into Dean’s hair. “It’s Saturday now. Cas said the punishment only had to last until today, and he says you’ve been real good, so it doesn’t have to last any longer. He said he’s proud of you, Dean. Gonna make us burgers again tonight, just for you. And he’s buying you clothes, so he won’t keep you naked anymore.”

Dean scoffs against the frail skin, digging his fingers deeper into the stupidly soft fabric of his brothers brand new _cashmere_ , cable knit jumper that still smells ridiculously new. “Yeah, and he’s buying me a _dog_ bed.”

Yeah, and wasn’t that fun. The damn alpha ended up ordering him _five_ , fucking even said Dean couldn’t look at his decisions ‘cause it was supposed to be a surprise, and how stupid ( _and terrifying_ ) is that? Smiling, smug bastard, like Dean needed more reminders of his place in the world, now he’s being made to sleep on the floor—as of tomorrow, of course, next day delivery for good little Dean. Oh, Christ.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Yeah. Dean’s heard it enough. Sam’s told him more than once. “He’s doing all that—buying you all this stuff ‘cause he thinks you’re worth it. He _knows_ you’re worth it. You were bad, so he punished you; you’re the omega, he’s the alpha, and you _need_ him. God, Dean, why don’t you just give him a chance? He’s doing all of this for you, you know.”

Right. Yeah, Dean did something in some distant past life that was worthy of this punishment, for sure. This pain. Humiliation.

His brother thinking he actually _deserves_ this.

But he doesn’t say anything more. Sam’s looking down at his creased little figure like he’s expecting some apologetic revelation to come pouring out of his mouth, but Dean just tucks lower, closer, and he mouths sadly at the brand new fabric at his brother’s ribs. Nuzzles it with his nose, until the spare hand currently leaning Sam back against a step moves up and starts running through his hair. Dean purrs for him in gratitude, but he doesn’t say anything else. What’s the point, right?

They stay like that for God-knows how long, before Cas comes swanning on out, and Dean’s dumped back to him again. He’s tired, though, so when Sam coaxes him into standing and nudges him softly back towards his alpha, Dean simply blinks up at him, peers timidly down at the newest plastic bag swinging merrily in his grip, before their chests are pressed together and he has their combined mated scent blocking up his nose.

“Good boy. Good pup, come on.”

And they head to the omega clothes shop across the path.

Dean gets new clothes. Stupid soft ones from cooing sales assistants that tease Cas about him being a handful. One’s that retain scent easier, so all Cas has to do is scent-mark it for a bit, before handing it over to Dean and leaving for the day when he has to go back to work. And all Dean has to do is throw it in the blender and sprint upstairs to have a scent-destroying bath. Perfect.

They get Sammy books. For school, but reading ones as well.

Dean gets fucking _slick_ _pads_ and shampoo.

Sammy gets a new backpack and a bookshelf.

Dean gets a purple knotted dildo ( _Sammy’s still safely freaking out over by the books_ ).

Sammy realises all he has to do to get stuff is ask politely.

Dean realises he has never detested his gender more in his entire, miserable life.


	5. Beds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.
> 
> But if you react badly towards anything like self harm, then read the notes to know what this chapter entails.

Dean wakes up to a kiss. He knows it’s a kiss because he can scent his alpha when he sucks in a breath; he can feel the stupidly familiar, ridiculously firm body ( _for an asshole of a surgeon_ ) pressed up against the entire length of his, and he has a quick second of not breathing from the mouth currently sucking up his air, so…a kiss. A fucking…stupid one.

“Mmphh,” he whines dumbly, his eyes flickering wide for a second—taking in dark lashes pressed against flushed, tanned cheeks—before he finally gets enough wits about him, and lifts his hands as some weak kind of _hey, asshole, back the fuck off_ , without having to actually say it. Not that he could, with the bastard attached to his _lips_ and all. Moreover, the chest is firm and bare, when he presses his palms there; and now that he thinks about it…there’s some definite interest prodding into his bare hip.

 _Shit_.

Turning his head works for about a second, soft huff-slash-groan noises pulsing into the air do nothing for the damp lips now trailing their way to Dean’s earlobe, tracing his jaw line. His hands are stalled and his wrists get gripped and held and fucking what the hell is he supposed to even do, huh? He can’t…he can’t exactly deny his alpha, can he? His mate? It’s wrong, for one, against his duty as the omega half. Let alone the fact that Dean’s pretty sure he spied a freaking spanking paddle ( _good holy fucking Christ above_ ) in one of the bags yesterday. He doesn’t exactly have a real varied choice here.

Fucking _crap_.

…oh God. Yeah, definite interest. A body climbing atop his own, pressing down into the length of his, shoving a thigh between two of his own, a whole new familiar length of _something_ pushing itself into Dean’s hipbone.

Oh God, he wants to…he wants to knot, doesn’t he? Outside of a heat, when Dean can offer his real consent, when he doesn’t have the throbbing need of a new potential mate breaking down his thoughts. They haven’t, not since Dean was released from that week. Castiel was pissed, to begin with; deterred from Dean’s sour moods, but now…he’s gotten over them, apparently. He thinks…he must think Dean has too. Holy fuck, he’s really going to do this, isn’t he? Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

“God, Dean,” the alpha pants into Dean’s ear. He rolls his hips and Dean _whines_. Fuck…fear, it’s fear isn’t it, this dread bubbling inside? Dean can’t…he can’t do _this_. The beds ( _they’ll be here today_ ), the collar ( _fuck knows when he’s planning on gifting Dean with that little treasure_ ), the new clothes and the canopy. He could deal. He _has_ to deal. But this—fuck, it’s just too much. It’s _too much_. “Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Castiel ( _please, sir, please_ ) whispers like it’s their dirty secret, pressing his words against Dean’s throat. “Relax, little one, it’s alright, now, I’ve got you. I’ll make it feel so good for you, Dean, I promise. Good boy,” and there it is, that jolt. Familiar with the praise, but Dean can’t decide if the jolt is a good one or bad. Right now, though? It’s the fucking devil.

“Please,” Dean breathes into the air, the white of the canopy bed blurred above him as he wriggles beneath the weight of the universe. He wrestles to get his hands free, “sir, I don’t,” _want this, can’t do this_ , “please, alpha, _please_.” But it’s mostly an unintelligible whine.

And either the alpha simply doesn’t hear him, understand him, or is completely fucking ignoring him, because all he answers in reply is, “Fuck, Dean,” around a guttural moan ( _it’s not a growl, please God, it’s not a growl_ ) and that hard length presses tighter to his bare hipbone.

Dean may or may not throw up.

Every possibility, right? Could possibly be _likely_.

Dean’s not hard, and he’s not slick. He’s not writhing beneath his alpha because he wants him, or he can’t control his need—he’s writhing because he can’t consent, even second hand, to this. His being, excluding his whimpering omega, won’t let him. Christ, he won’t let himself fall so far. He can’t.

“Stop,” he whispers, but the word cracks against his tears. He chokes for a second, and tries again. “Stop; alpha, sir, please.” Better, but his voice is too hollow. Maybe that just means something. “Please don’t do this.”

Castiel hears him this time, Dean knows he does. Hands flutter unsurely against his wrist-bones for short, terrifying second, lips halt damply against his temple. Slowly, like a deadly freaking animal, the body rises up from his own, and giant blue eyes stare down at him, all seeing. He frowns with dark brows, his lips part with quick, horny breaths, and hands release Dean’s wrists  to press themselves into the mattress bordering Dean’s ears. Dean gulps at the attention, which is kinda dumb, considering he was really getting more of that before.

But this…this considering, confused tilt to Castiel’s head… _fuck_ , it’s so very different.

“Dean?” he asks, and at that, Dean lets his eyes slip closed—cancelling him from the white cocoon of the canopied bed, those deadly eyes and mussed to hell hair. “Little one, look at me, please.”

Fucking hell.

He’s frowning, still, so that hasn’t changed. Dean should just turn over now, shouldn’t he? Present his bare, dry ass for the taking and wait for Castiel to either plunder inside him or fetch that black leather paddle. Make him bleed or bruise, whichever one tickles his fancy.

…Christ.

“Sorry,” Dean tries, though he figures out himself that it counts for nothing. A whispered apology isn’t going to stench the pain, is it?

“It’s alright,” the alpha says instantly, shaking his head like he’s surprised, dipping his brow down lower. “You don’t have to apologise, pup, it’s okay. Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? What’s fucking _wrong_? Well, how about the shitty wakeup call, huh, ‘cause that was wrong—how about the stiff cock still nestled up against Dean’s thigh and hipbone, because that sure as hell isn’t wanted. Or maybe it’s the bed and the collar and the paddle and those eyes and Sammy not giving two shits or dog beds and patronization and no one caring or that dumb fucking bite, kneeling at his side and living without clothes for too long, Dad ditching them and Bobby running at one sight of Dean whining. This fucking gender shit. _His_ gender. Fucking…everything!

But Dean doesn’t say any of that, of course. He just ducks his head swiftly, tucking his eyes to pool safely at Castiel’s tanned, early-morning-scruff throat, and sucks in one giant, debilitating breath.

He says, quietly, “I’m…I’m not wet. M’sorry.”

And waits for the pain. That coast scent of alpha to zip from arousal ( _still echoing into the air_ ) to anger, and the slap of leather or a strong palm.

Instead, Dean feels a soft breath push across his lips. Delicate surgeon-precise fingers dance their way across his cheek bone; Dean flickers his eyes up to a softly smiling face. A traitorous asshole of a face, but soft all the same.

“You’re scared, sweetheart, and that’s okay,” he says soothingly, trailing his fingers to the dip of Dean’s clavicle and inciting that familiar pulse of calmness and zips of muted pleasure as he presses into the joint of Dean’s bones. Damn Missouri and her displays of affection, this fucking alpha shouldn’t know how to do this. Dean melts into the pillows anyway. Fuck. “You beautiful little thing. My perfect, rebellious little mate.” Wait…now Dean’s perfect for _being_ rebellious? That’s some backwards, twisted, fucking terrifying knowledge right there, _fuck_. “I haven’t touched you like this since your heat, Dean, you must be feeling the need, hmm?”…no. He…he fucking hasn’t, okay? He’s not wet and he’s not hard, he totally hasn’t been feeling anything. He _hasn’t_. “I have, little one. I want you every second I lay eyes on you.” A press of lips to his forehead and Dean floats for one quick second. “Thought about it yesterday,” he mutters into Dean’s flushed skin. “And every single second leading to this one. I’ve thought about you tied to me in the bath, sweetheart, sleeping on my knot and purring out your pleasure.” Oh…God. Feels…feels _good_. “Tasting you, Dean. I miss your slick on my tongue, little omega, your perfect little _cock_ pulsing into my mouth,” shit, shit, shit, Dean’s _not_ getting hard, he isn’t, “coming and calling out my name. Mmm,” he groans softly and mouths his way down to Dean’s chin. And Dean…he’s rutting his way into his alpha’s stomach. Hard. Aching. _Shit_.

“Alpha,” Dean gasps, slick starting to pool into the sheets. So fast, it almost hurts—

“Feel so perfect. So obedient. Beautiful in my collar.”

…ah.

Dean stops moving, after that. He stops writhing against the alpha, stops pushing up into him. He lets his arms flutter their way down to the bed, resting his entire body perfectly for his alpha’s taking, but he doesn’t react when the alpha claims it. He doesn’t even flinch when his softening dick’s sucked into a damp, hot mouth. Maybe he scoots his hips higher when three fingers wrestle their way into the softened muscle, but that’s only because he doesn’t want the pain.

He shifts from Castiel when the cloud of fear starts looming once more, and he turns himself and he presents, and he braces himself for the pressure of the cock. His mates cock.

He doesn’t cry when Castiel fucks into him.

He doesn’t cry when the knot starts to form and that familiar pain Dean thought would start receding over the times they tied starts to swell. He doesn’t even cry when Castiel’s come floods his insides with his seed.

In fact, he manages to hold off all the damn way until his own orgasm hits him like a freight train. Until he spills out against the sheets and stains them, Castiel palming his dick and mouthing at his mark, ass clenching around the knot attaching them. Only then, collapsing into the pile of his own worthless mess, do the tears finally come.

Castiel simply kisses them away.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

They only venture back downstairs once Dean’s dressed in clean, soft jeans; a brand new, washed, oak green Henley; and a light brown, chunky knit cardigan, that he thinks, oddly, makes him look like that Frank guy from _Everybody Loves Raymond_. He rolls the sleeves up whilst Castiel’s busy with his own pale blue shirt, though when he turns back, he doesn’t notice. Dean couldn’t care less if he did, to be honest. He still smells like alpha come.

The beds arrive during their breakfast of pancakes, with Dean sat beside his alpha for once at the table, a socked foot resting solidly between his ankles. Dean keeps eating when Castiel presses a sugary kiss to his forehead—dragging a quick hand through his hair—and tells both him and Sam to ‘please, continue’ as he goes and answers the door.

Sam looks at Dean like he’s about to explode. Dean ignores him.

The betas that come in, hauling cardboard packages between them, glance at Dean with interest for quick seconds, before apparently reminding themselves of his place in this house, and slamming their attention down, shuffling awkwardly with the containers. Dean ignores them, too.

“Outside?” one of them asks Castiel—a shorter man, stocky with cropped red hair. He motions to the French doors leading to the patio, and Castiel nods with a smile. He unlocks them for the man, before directing the other two into the kitchen.

It takes the four of them twenty minutes. Dean eats everything on his plate in that time, and he accepts the blueberries from Castiel’s fingers; whines dutifully at the push of fingers through his hair. But he’s not paying attention, not really. He’s just… _there_.

Fuck knows, right?

Castiel shows the betas the door. Sam smiles happily when Castiel offers to show them the beds ( _some built in or constructed, apparently, which is ridiculous, but Dean doesn’t say so_ ), holding a hand out for Dean to clutch to. He does. But he keeps watching the floor.

The first bed is in the living room; dragged there whilst Dean was eating stoically, attention fixed on the half empty bottle of syrup. And it is, for all intents and purposes, a dog bed. Donut shaped and backed by a roll of fabric and stuffing, it’s just basically…a fucking _dog’s bed_. Dean doesn’t “try it” like his alpha suggests. He doesn’t “dude, just see what it’s like” how Sammy tells him to. He does, however, whine ( _unwillingly, thank you very much_ ) into the tense air and tuck up as some kind of pathetic compensation against his alpha’s side. He does nuzzle against a soft throat in begging and he does huff his sorrow against warm skin. Castiel rubs a hand between his shoulder blades. He doesn’t make Dean try it.

The next bed he’s escorted to is the one out in the garden and it does kinda look like a lounger—white mattress-cushion thing, and a dark wicker basket holding it. It has a canopy, though, white and wired that curves above it to both keep the sun from the bed and the rain, Dean thinks, if it were turned the right way. They don’t bother asking Dean to try that one. Sam just smiles at him.

Dean ignores him.

“And in the kitchen,” Castiel says, voice nothing but amiable, guiding them all into the greyed out room ( _like most of this fucking place_ ). “So nothing can drop on you,” and he laughs.

It’s under the island. Dark blue pillowed, with cushions up against the back and one side. Built in. Grey. Hell.

Dean hums. They move on.

There’s one in Castiel’s study—flat and dull like a mattress, but easily big enough to curl up on. Like the rest of them, Dean supposes. No springs, though. Dean’s apparently not worth the trouble.

“Sweetheart,” Castiel prompts, chuckling as he pulls Dean closer. “We can work up to these, I promise.” Yeah. Fuck you very much. “I want you happy, little bird, and I want you close. Good boy, puppy, good boy.”

Sam leaves them to it when they start climbing to the third floor. Dean can understand why—he’s never been up here either—but it doesn’t stop the thud of apprehension ( _fucking_ fear, _asshole_ ) from echoing into his chest, or the wisp of a yip to edge into his throat. Castiel holds his hand. It seriously doesn’t help.

“I wanted to introduce you to this room today, Dean,” he says almost clinically—in something Dean could almost consider calling his ‘Doctor Voice’. Or, you know, _would_ if he actually gave a steaming shit. They wait by one of the two doors up here, white and clean and the same as all the fucking others. Dean looks to his black socked feet. “I would like for you to think of this room as a sort of…sanctuary, all right?” Mmm. Sure. “You’re safe in this room, little bird, I can promise you that. This room means _safety_. It means that I will always be with you, and I will always take care of you, okay?” he waits for a second, eyeing Dean meaningfully until _his omega_ nods like he has no fucking idea, and he smiles. Dean goes back to looking at the door when Castiel pushes it open. He goes back to eyeing up the floor when the flush of fucking _baby blue_ echoes back at him.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Come on, sweetheart, you can come in, it’s all right. Come on, pup,” but the coaxing is fucking mute, because it’s the tugging of Dean’s hand that drags him into the damn place—the fingers digging into his wrists that insight the ugly growl of a noise from his throat and the sight of the fucking _cage_ tucked into the corner that drags it, full force, out into the air. It’s _everything_ that makes him push Castiel.

“Fucking…” he gasps, eyes swinging from his mate ( _Jesus Christ, he’s stuck with him, he’s trapped_ forever) back to the blue cage in the fucking corner beyond the bed without pillows or comforters or blankets—just a blue fucking sheet in the white walled room and a skylight and Dean _will not_ —“ _No_. No!”

The stairs are longer than he remembers from two minutes ago, and they take hours for him to plunder down them, millenniums for him to race down the second set to the living room. He can hear Castiel, but it doesn’t matter. He won’t do this.

Not this.

 _Please_.

The hands that pull him to a stop are strong, just as strong as they were on that day, just as strong as they’re going to be when they strip him again and shove him to the mattress. Rape him. Abuse him. Neither would be a fucking surprise. Ticked both of ‘em off, huh?

Sam’s there, and he’s crying. He’s watching on at his thrashing brother screaming into the living room, their alpha gripping him to a standstill. Dean doesn’t stop though, because Sam’s made his position clear.

“Dean!” Castiel snaps, but Dean fucking forces through that _need_ inside of him, the urge to obey like nothing else and he gags on it, but he doesn’t give in. He doesn’t stop. He can’t. Not anymore. “Calm down, now! Stop!”

Dean stops when the hand grips like a vice to the nape of his throat. He pants against it and he rolls his eyes back, but there’s nothing he can do to fight biology. Not this kind, anyway.

“Dean, please,” Sammy says, almost too quietly to hear, but Dean catches it anyway. “Stop it. You’ll just hurt yourself.”

“Hurt _myself_?” Dean gasps, writhing in the grip of death currently choking him and he glares daggers at his ignorant baby brother. “He hits me! He bought me a _cage_ , Sammy! Fuck you. Fuck both of you!”

“That. Is. Enough.” And it hurts Dean.

But it’s not enough. Not yet.

“What are you gonna do?” Dean spits into the air, squirming in the grip to face the bastard that’s breaking him. “Rape me again, huh? Beat me? Go ahead. I fucking _hate_ you. I hate you _. I hate you!_ ”

Everything goes black again when Dean’s pulled into a chest—shoved to a strong throat and held there by the grip on his nape, blinded by the hand slipping over his eyes. He can feel the fight drawn from his body. He can feel the horror overtaking him again. The fear. The pain.

“Enough, little bird,” and Dean rumbles with the voice against the alpha’s chest. Wipes his tears across the stiff collar of a pale blue shirt ( _like the cage, the room, and the cage he’ll lock you into, the cage, the fucking cage_ )…“No, Dean, not again, calm. Hush, now. Calm down.”

Dean twitches in the clutch of the murderer. The life ruiner. But he sags without the choice awarded to him, and he calms because that’s what his omega’s telling him to do. And with those fingers at his pressure points…omega’s taking the hell over.

“Told you he wouldn’t like that,” Sam says, and then it all makes so much sense and Dean’s bubbling up with hysterical laughter. Choking himself on that scented skin.

Sammy planned it all along. He knew what they were all planning, he fucking knew it. Probably made it all up himself. Wanted Dean out of the picture so when he matured an alpha, he could go back to Bobby and Dad and they could love him like they weren’t capable of doing with Dean, not like this, not like the animal Sam wants him to become.

Not anymore.

“Sam?” Dean mutters, but the traitor still hears him.

“Yeah, Dean?”

“Fucking hate you, too.”

Dean’s whipped away from the strained, awful comfort of the chest and the neck like _that_ , dragged into the fresh air and held there by fingers at his chin, tilted into the air and glared at by one seriously pissed off alpha.

And maybe that brings everything into perspective.

And maybe Dean whimpers.

“Quiet.” He’s scary, huh? He’s gonna make Dean bleed, isn’t he? “You will go up to that room, do you understand me?” He forces Dean’s head into a nod and Dean whines. “You will go up to that room, you will lie, face down on that bed, and you will wait for me, do you understand?”

_—can’t hurt, gonna bleed and cry and sob and it’s gonna be so bad, gonna be real, real bad—_

“Hey!” and Dean’s tears are starting again, though Dean’s unsure when they stopped. “Do. You. Understand. Me?”

And Dean nods. Nods because he doesn’t have a choice.

And when he starts towards the stairs again, tail between his pathetic fucking legs, he hears Sammy crying into Castiel’s shoulder. But he doesn’t turn back. He doesn’t fucking dare.

Ω

Dean doesn’t make it to That Room, as it turns out.

He gets about half way there, stands at the foot of the last flight of stairs, and he freezes. And he sobs. And he’s never wanted sweet _nothing_ more in his whole entire life.

That’s where Castiel finds him. Curled up on the third step because that’s all he could manage, and he collapsed through the sheer uselessness of it all, and wouldn’t Daddy be proud of Dean, huh? Wouldn’t Bobby want him back? Pathetic bastard he is.

“What are you doing?” Castiel asks, and he stands over Dean with folded arms. “Stand up.”

Only Dean doesn’t think he can. He doesn’t think his legs will hold him—he doesn’t think he can make it up the rest of them, not like this.

“Please,” he hisses into the carpet, tucked as low as he can and still eye the alpha. He’s glaring. Azure eyes crystal hard. And Dean thinks he might chuck up the pancakes, and that would be worse, wouldn’t it?

“Don’t play the omega card with me Dean, I would seriously advise you against it. You’re obviously _mature_ enough to tell your child of a brother that you hate him, hmm? You’re obviously not shy enough to avoid screaming at me. Stand up, omega. Face me like the alpha you seem so sure you are.”

Oh God. He’ll beat him then. Beat him to the ground and it’ll either kill him with some sort of agonising relief, or it’ll leave him broken. Utterly and completely, broken.  

But…is that bad?

Sam doesn’t care about him.

His lifelong mate wants to beat him into a bloody pulp.

He’s expected to willingly just crawl into a _cage_.

Does it really all matter?

Dean’s legs struggling beneath him give him some sort of answer, though. Shaking limbs propping him into standing offer some sort of remark, and he trembles as he watches the man, shivers against the imaginary chill as his eyes meet burning blue.

He whimpers when he’s dragged back down the steps. He yips his failure when their bedroom comes into view, when the door is thrown open and he’s pulled in after it.

Dean can practically taste the man’s fury when his jeans are ripped from his hips and he’s shoved from their pool at his ankles. His cardigan and shirt aren’t bothered with this time, though, and he’s _thrown_ to the bed, face down, pinned there by one firm knee to his ankle and this is worse than before, this is bad, so bad, fucking the worst thing that could ever—

Dean freezes like a startled cat when he hears the familiar _whoosh_ of a belt sliding from the fabric of his trousers.

He takes it back.

This is the worst thing. The worst thing in the world.

“You promised!” he spits into the duvet, squirming beneath the harsh weight of that fucking _knee_. Castiel pauses in his motions, but the belt slips off with a resounding _zip_. Dean chokes on his own horror. “You said…you said you wouldn’t use rape as a punishment, you promised.” He gasps as the weight shifts, changing until hands are pushing him instead, white hot at the small of his back. “Castiel. Alpha. Please,” and he’s trembling like a madman, shaking from his body. “Please don’t. I could never…I wouldn’t ever forgive you. Please.”

Not just Dean frozen in the moment, not just him with baited breath.

He’s about to fight, he thinks, when the hand turns softer against his spine. When the other joins it, palms soothingly ( _fucking would be if Dean didn’t know_ ) against the flesh just below his ass, rubbing at the joint between thighs and cheek. Dean shivers into the bed sheets.

“I would never hurt you like that, little one,” comes a soft voice, and Dean’s swells into the air in a bitter sob. How did it ever come to this, huh? The hell did Dean ever do? “Shh, Dean. I would _never_ do that to you. You are my world now. I will keep you, and I will adore you, and I will raise our pups with you.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dean whines.

 “But I will not have you speak like that to me, or to your brother, in our home.” He breathes out a sigh and Dean can feel it ruffle inside the mess of his hair. “I will punish you now, Dean, and I will punish you again tomorrow. When I return from work, I want you prepared on the bed, understood?” Dean nods. He can’t think. “Good. Hush pup, that’s good. I’ll just use my hand, alright? I won’t use the belt, it’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll go quick, puppy, and you can stay up here after, if you want, yes? You can do whatever makes you comfortable once we’re done, I promise. Will you kneel up for me, Dean?”

No. No he won’t, he can’t, he’s aching and it won’t let him—

But he does. He does because his alpha’s asking him and his omega wants to comply. Fucking stupid ass thing it is.

Shit. Shit fucking shit.

The first slap isn’t a surprise. Dean could hear the ruffle of the shirt as his arm rose, could sense the air thickening as Dean sucked a quick breath in before the war, tensing enough so that the resounding _SLAP_ of his stupidly huge hand lands on harder muscle. Still hurts like a bitch, but…fuck, whatever.

“Count for me, little one. Thirteen tonight and thirteen tomorrow. Count, Dean.”

“Wahha,” and that did not sound right. _Pathetic_ , holy fuck. He tries again, shuffling on his elbows, “O-one.”

“Good. Keep going, good boy.”

 _Fuck_.

“Two.”

“Louder, puppy, there’s my good boy.”

“Please…” Dean jolts forward, face pressed flat against the sheets, need pulsing deep, residing inside him as the next fucking five come in quick succession, five separate declarations of Dean’s failure, of his lack of everything and everyone, of no one and no brother, no Sammy, no nothing.

Dean’s sobbing by number eight this time.

He tries to speak but he can’t by number twelve, tries so hard to push the number from his lips, drag it from his belly and just say it, but he can’t. He fucking _can’t_ , because it’s raw and bad and his lungs are too fucking occupied trying to breathe.

“Say it, Dean.”

He shakes his head, shoving it back and forth because he _can’t_. Fuck, please, he can’t breathe.

“Two more, little one, you can. You have a way with words,” and he’s mocking Dean and he can’t take it, he can’t do it, please, please, please, “I know you do. Come on, Dean. Say it.”

Dean flinches about seven times from imaginary slaps, cries out into the white blur of a bedroom each and every time, until _finally_ he screams the, “twelve!” and his flinch is real, because it _hurts_.

“Say it, Dean, and this is all over. I’m not even going to hit you again, just say the word and I’ll soothe you, alright? One word. Say it.”

“Thir…th…” but it’s not working and it’s not worth it. Dean collapses into the bed because he’s not being struck again. It’s over. The pain, the embarrassment, it’s all gone until the next time Dean fucks up again. Until the alpha wants his outlet, drags him to The Room upstairs and beats his ass bloody before locking him in the cage.

“Say it pup, and we can move on. I want to help you Dean, I just need you to say that one word, alright? Please, Dean, come on.”

“Jus’go,” he slurs, pressing deeper into the comforter. His tears soak into the fabric. “Pleasss. Go’way.”

Silence, again, but Dean’s not paying attention. He’s throbbing once more, ringing from the sensations of it all, horrified by himself, terrified of his one mate, the one person who’s supposed to look after him and keep him and love him like that Shakespeare once said. Like he was taught in school. Like he never thought could happen to _him_.

He was right though, wasn’t he?

 

The next time Dean looks up, Castiel’s gone. Darkness pools into the bedroom from the window, and it presses in around him—shoves its way into the gaps of the drawn canopy curtains and fucking grabs him by the throat and squeezes. Crap. Where the hell is Castiel?

The clock says it’s eleven twenty three, so Sammy’s long since gotten to bed. Jesus, did he sleep? He doesn’t feel like he did. He missed lunch then, and dinner. Not that he’s particularly hungry, but he’s feeling their absence.

Dean waits thirty three minutes before the ache grows too much, and the blackness of the bedroom draws in on him.

Dean finds _his_ scent beyond the locked ( _fuck_ ) door of the spare room.

He scrambles against the wood for a second, pulling at the silver handle and mewling for the attention his omega is desperate for.

He sinks to the ground because he has to.

He hisses his pitiful “thirteen,” because nothing else matters.

Dean sleeps, because somehow, this is better than nothing.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

Dean wakes back in their bed to the curtains being drawn and an alpha, tall, tanned and slender, dressing himself in the door to the wardrobe. He’s watching Dean, but he’s not smiling. Hands are swift as they fix his tie, swifter still as they tuck in his shirt—which is stupid, ‘cause doctor’s wear scrubs and stuff, right?

Dean curls into a ball when he walks towards the bed. Dressed for success indeed, and he’s infinitely terrifying when he leans closer, presses a threatening hand (fuck, please, please) to Dean’s forehead and whispers his words into his ear.

“On this bed, ass in the air, understood?” he demands, and Dean’s nodding if only for the placation of the fear. His eyes are wide, he can feel them. His hurt thumps inside his chest. “Good. I’m taking Sam to school now, but I’ll be home before him. Three o’clock, Dean. I’ll see you then.”

And then he’s gone.

And then Dean’s left…just left. Abandoned, right?

Bad thing? Not sure.

Good? Yeah. Probably.

Nine o’clock passes pretty easily. Ten, maybe a little stiffer, but bearable. Eleven, twelve and Dean’s pacing the entire house, scent marking to make it feel even slightly like his—rubbing against doors and chairs and avoiding The Room like the plague.

One finds Dean whining at the foot of the stairs for the second time in less than a whole day—he’s not really sure why.

Half one finds him in the bathroom, two finds him in the bath.

No hot water, but maybe Dean just doesn’t turn it on.

Starts getting muggy, in his head.

Starts getting numb.

Dean doesn’t even scent Castiel’s panic when he finds him an hour later. Doesn’t understand the strain in his face, the tautness of his words as he’s carried into the bedroom.

Doesn’t understand, “Fuck! Dean, come on, little one, please don’t do this, it’s okay, it’s okay—just breathe for me Dean, breathe for me, come on,” but it doesn’t really matter.

Last thing Dean thinks he can remember is whispered, painful words. Hands in his hair, towels rubbing at his numb flesh.

His tongue’s numb when he mumbles the, “Thirteen.”

He doesn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Okay, guys, so this is pretty much NON-CON from Dean's perspective.  
> He says no. He says don't. He smells of terror and he's trembling while Cas kisses him but he lies and says he doesn't want to have sex because he's not wet. Cas has sex with him anyway.  
> Non-con. I've added it to the main tags.
> 
> WARNING #2:  
> Suicide attempt. Dean suffers through something similar to a sub-drop and a panic attack and he goes and has a nice long bath in freezing cold water. HE DOESN'T DIE BUT HE DIDN'T ENTIRELY WANT TO LIVE ANYMORE, EVEN SUBCONSCIOUSLY.


	6. Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For spoilery type warnings please see the end notes.

Dean’s eyes feel particularly ( _abnormally? Ugh_ ) heavy as he starts to peel them open, his throat offering an involuntary and embarrassing little mewl thing into the air before he’s finally even slightly able to come into himself.

Christ; that spanking must have taken more out of him than he thought because he feels fucking _horrendous_.

…and numb. Really, _really_ numb. Huh.

“Dean? Hey, buddy, you awake for me?” …well, who the hell is that? A chick.  A chick who knows his name, but…Dean doesn’t know any chicks aside from Mama and that doesn’t sound like her—and yeah, Dean’s never calling _her_ a chick again. _Weird_. So, a stranger-chick then. A stranger chick who knows his name and who’s real close if the volume of her voice is right and _ow_ , actually, she’s loud.  And nosy. Stupid and nosy and loud and Dean wishes she’d _sshhh_ for a second, ‘cause he’s…tired. Yeah. Tired. And numb. And wrong. _Fuck_. “Dean? Hey, no, no, kiddo, I want you to stay awake right now, okay? Yeah? Come on, just keep those peepers open for me and you’re golden, good boy.”

“He’s still not shivering, Jo,” and that’s another voice and he’s angry again, angry with Dean and he still needs to spank him for yesterday and-and _thirteen!_ Thirteen, please, _please_ —

“Hey, hey, shh, puppy, just calm down and chill out for a second, okay? You’re okay, kiddo, I promise,” but not okay from _him_ because _he_ hurts and _he_ built a room just for punishing Dean and _he_ wants to hurt him, _he_ gets off on Dean’s fear scent and _he_ likes it, _he_ likes hurting him, please— “Cas, just…fucking back off for a second, okay? You’re freaking the crap outta him. Just go sit over there.”

“He’s my _mate_.”

 _Please_ , please, please, please, please—

“Cas! Now!”

And there’s a pressure on Dean’s forehead and noises like movement and when Dean finally musters up enough courage to actually open his eyes…it’s blurry. But there is a girl…a woman standing over him with blonde hair a fuzzy halo above her pale face, surrounding her. And Dean can see the distorted edge of a blue glove slipping just into the line of his sight—that tacky feeling of latex sharp and bitter when it jolts slightly on his skin. They’re moving, Dean thinks. And there’s noise. Worse than loud voices; piercing almost. Rhythmic and evil and _ouch_.

“Yeah, there we go, kiddo, you’re doing really well for me, huh? Good boy,” she says, and Dean’s sight clears just enough for a pink smile to hover into his vision.

Ugh, Dean does _not_ feel good.

 “W’ssss’happennin’?” he asks, eyes fucking weighted or something because it shouldn’t be so hard to blink, right? Everything’s fuzzy and confusing and no-one’s letting him sleep. He thinks he needs to just sleep and then…he’ll be okay, right? If this woman’s not letting _Him_ near Dean, then she’ll be good, won’t she? Dean hopes so. He’s pretty sure he needs that right now.

“You’re in an ambulance, kiddo,” she says slowly. “We’re on our way to the hospital.”

“…Oh,” Dean says intelligently, peering up at her smiling face and frowning slightly in confusion. A hospital. Castiel works at a hospital, right? Uh-oh.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. We’re gonna get you warmed up any second, okay?”

Warmed? Well, Dean’s not particularly cold, actually—although, now that he thinks about it, he is kinda stingy. Is that what cold feels like now? Stingy? There’s a specific sting under his armpit though, and another on his finger. Not fun, and he doesn’t think he wants to heat that sting any.

“You breathing okay?” she asks again, and _duh_. He’s talking isn’t he? But he nods anyway, ‘cause she seems nice. She sent _him_ away. “Good. Ash, you wanna fine tune his oxygen a little? I think it’s playing with his responses a bit.”

“Sure thing, boss,” comes another voice—and when Dean turns there’s a dude with a mullet in the same blue shirt as the girl. It’s still all blurry and grey and white in places, but if Dean blinks enough he can make those details out. And he thinks they’re betas. Scratch that, actually. He _hopes_. Omegas can’t work on-call, and alphas…well, let’s just say Dean shudders to imagine. He doesn’t want a stranger whacking at his bare ass—even if right now he can’t feel it.

“You’re doing so well, Dean,” she says once more, drawing his attention back to her pink lipped smile. “We’re nearly there, okay, and I know not much is getting through right now, but everything will make sense soon, I promise. Just keep an eye open, and we’ll get there quicker, yeah?”

Yeah. Cool.

Static sounds then, a terrible buzz of noise that has Dean flinching in his little cocoon…wait. He’s wrapped up…in what? The hell?

The noise stops as Dean starts contemplating what the hell’s going on, and that hand on his head leaves him, barren and colder and wrong and bare to _him_. He’ll be punished again. He’ll be beaten and raped.

“UCSD, this is medic squire, eleven twenty-two, line number zero nine six, paramedic Harvelle.” Too many _words_. “We’re about ten minutes out from your location with a sixteen year old male found unresponsive and mostly submerged in freezing bath water for approximately…Cas, how long was he in the water?”

Oh no, don’t fucking ask him, he’s only there if people talk to him, he’s only around if he’s acknowledged, please, please, don’t talk to him, please—

“I don’t know,” and fucking _fuck_.

The latex hand’s back. And a beeping, high pitched and gaining frequency pulses into the van—mellowing out again as the lady’s hand gets deeper and deeper into his hair. Dean ignores the beeping once more, once it goes all boring and _beep……beep…..beep_ again.

“Estimate, dude, come on. You’re the one that found him, professional guessing here.”

Mmm, latex feels nice now. Kinda weird still, like she’s pushing into his head through a sponge or something like that—distant, really. But his omega is fucking ecstatic for the wanted contact after being so deprived for the last however long he’s been held captive with _Him_. He’s taking fucking anything right now.

“His lips were blue, if that helps. I’d say about an hour.”

 _Ugh_ , it’s fucking _him_ again. Seriously, just kick him out please, straight onto the road and into oncoming fucking sixteen-wheelers. Dean’ll stay with blondie and mullet-man.

“Approximately an hour. At this time, he’s conscious, alert, slightly disoriented. Last vital signs we have are one-twenty over eighty-eight blood pressure—last core temperature we got was about ninety with an increase from eighty-seven when we first found him. Again, we’re about ten minutes out. Any questions, radio back, over.”

“Heart rate’s back to normal,” the other guy says, mullet dude with the oxygen or whatever that means, and he comes back into Dean’s limited view with a smile and a wink spared for the omega as he reaches over and takes something yellow back from the girl.

“I think it’s a fear thing, to be honest. His scent’s returning to normal,” she pauses, mulling something over for a second before fiddling around with something near Dean’s face. Near his nose? Weird. “What d’you say, Cas, is his scent back to normal yet?”

Oooh, she sounds pissed. _Please be at Castiel, please be at Castiel…_

“…I wish you could have met him under better circumstances.” Go. Away. Please, please go away, just fuck off and leave, alright? Mama can come fetch Dean, and Bobby can drive Dad and they can all beat the shit out of Cas together, yeah? Yeah. Please, just… _please_.

…maybe Dean can have Sammy back?

Dean doesn’t feel his shivers, but when he looks down at the orange cocoon enveloping him ( _he must look suspiciously like really weird moth chrysalis_ ) he can see it convulsing around it’s blur, jarring along with that beeping thing that’s picked up again and it’s irritating and embarrassing, but he can’t stop it…and he can’t breathe. Perfect, just fucking brilliant.

“Ash, mask,” the female says, and seconds later, the thing from under Dean’s nose is removed and he really can’t fucking breathe—before a mask is secured over his head ( _lifted gently when Jo helps him_ ) and the breath pours back into him, invading his lungs. It helps little else, but it is better, he guesses, and when his vision is blacked out with soft little, “Shshshsh, good boy, it’s okay, sweetheart, it’s alright, just stay with me, yeah?” not much else matters. He doesn’t think he stops shivering, but the heart beat machine soothes a little. Dean thinks he’s mostly back to himself now.

“Jo…if I’d known just how bad he was, I would have—”

“He tried to _kill himself_ , Cas,” the female—Jo?—hisses into the empty air that Dean’s not a part of anymore and it feels _awesome_. “I refuse to believe you, of all _damn_ people, didn’t notice a sixteen year old _omega_ on the verge of suicide. Your own damn _mate_.”

Dean whimpers, he thinks. Well, he thinks it’s him. Probably, considering he’s the only one really capable of honestly expressing his feelings that way, and he can’t believe Castiel The Alpha would ever stoop to that sort of level. Even if he likes it when Dean makes noises like that.

“I didn’t…I didn’t click onto it. He was scared, but never…never depressed, I don’t know—”

“I’d say there was some level of depression working here, wouldn’t you? Damn blind alpha. And what the hell happened with his brother? I thought he was working with you on the whole soothing thing.”

Castiel clears his throat and Dean whines pitifully. “I think we might have been too focused on the end goal and lost sight of Dean’s present. It must have seemed like a team-up against him.”

“No fucking shit, you moron,” Jo whispers, and then she’s close again and Dean can relax…well, as much as he can whilst his body’s still convulsing. More stings are starting to edge into the numbness now, his other armpit joining with his throat and chest—even his groin’s starting to feel it, and that same finger feels biting as the others join in, accompanied by his toes.

“I don’t want you near him until he’s completely coherent, you understand me? I mean it Cas, not until he’s back on exact form, okay? Okay,” and Castiel must have nodded, because the oxygen mask is being adjusted and her face is back where Dean can see. “How’s everything feeling right now, pup? Any stinging yet?”

Dean nods because it’s starting to hurt just that inch too much, offering a tight, “C-c-can you…m-m-m-make it st-stop, please?” and that sounded weird. Still not feeling that cold though, but maybe…maybe that’s after. Just aching and burning right now and maybe he’d take the cold instead, given the choice. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

“We can get it done and dusted as soon as your settled into the hospital, okay? And then you can sleep as long as you need, I promise. You’ll be more than safe there, I swear it buddy.”

But Dean shakes his head because that’s stupid. Castiel is in the same ambulance as them, he’s on his way to the same place and he’ll do it once Jo’s not around. Dean still needs that last half of his punishment for being so hateful towards his carers. His baby brother, and his…his mate. Jesus.

“Shh, pup, you’re gonna be perfect. I promise.”

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

They put this heated lilo thing on top of Dean once he’s ‘safely’ inside the hospital, jabs an IV into his hand to put this weird heated fluid into his blood stream, and heat him up like a lizard on a rock with tons of damn lights. Everyone bustles around him and he stays with it while they’re still telling him to as the stinging turns to uncontrollable shakes again, the shakes devolving into aches and finally everything is simply numb again. Not the same kind, but it’s a relief to be out of it. The dark skinned lady tells him he can sleep now, if he wants to, and he’ll be wheeled into his private room “thanks to that handsome mate of yours” for a break of the bustle of the UCSD. Dean doesn’t register them moving him from bed to bed, he’s already too far gone. Next time he wakes, though, it’s dark again, and he can smell that distinct scent of _family_ and _security_. And it lulls him back to sleep.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

Dean wakes to the smell of food, and that is rarely a bad thing. Before he can actually master the cracking of his eyes though, he breathes in for a second, letting his mind imagine lumpy pancakes sizzling on Mama’s grill back home—syrup stained in splodges around Sammy’s chubby cheeks and purple jelly gripped in tiny fingers. When Dad was just letting them visit his funny friend, as opposed to dumping them there for good. When everything was… _perfect_.

…But that was a long time ago.

Dean flickers his eyes now instead, flinches at the onslaught of artificial light, but manages to keep them open—long enough to sniff out the source of the scent.

And to find Jo sat beside him. Smiling. Huh.

He’s almost surprised he remembers everything to be honest, given his recent exploits into the inner workings of his mate’s hospital, but none of it cascades back to him on an onslaught and it’s not some huge surprise. It’s just, kinda, _right there_ , really. Not that he lets himself dwell, of course. Not with the—beta, he was right—sat right beside him. Holding a McDonald’s box. Grinning like a madwoman.

“Morning, pup,” she says brightly, and Dean peers timidly to the garish hospital light with one brow raised, because according to that, it’s still dark out. Not early enough to be awake, anyway. She laughs happily, and something inside Dean’s omega perks up slightly, inching forward from its corner of pitiful despair to sniff around at the new comer. Dean manages to hold back from doing the same. Pretty much. “Yeah, okay, but _technically_ it is morning, so I’m right.” She holds up the box like a chest of priceless silks and brandishes it, nodding at the illustration of pancakes. “Dude, McDonald’s says morning, I’m agreeing. You hungry?”

Mm. Definitely. Dean can’t remember the last time he was fed back at Castiel’s, thinking maybe—the pancakes, ironically. Christ, that was at least, what, two whole days ago? Nearly three? Jesus, he damn well should be hungry then.

“They’ve been feeding you on the IV until about an hour ago,” she says, nodding at the needle still nestled into his hand. Mm. Not too hungry anymore, to be honest. That’s fucking disgusting. Jo laughs again, and it isn’t until she’s holding that same hand that he realises he must have grimaced at the sight of the damn thing, which is totally warranted, by the way. It’s _gross_. “ _So_ ,” she drawls, pulling back his attention. “You hungry? We have the works, McMuffins, pancakes, hashbrowns…so Dean. You a sausage man or an egg man?”

Dean picks egg, just because he wants the sausage. It’s not really conscious, he guesses, he just… _does_. And he eats the pancakes when Jo cuts them up for him, and he nibbles on a hashbrown because she tells him to. He doesn’t speak much outside of answering medical queries, but he listens to her talking about everything and nothing under the sun, and he starts to forget why he’s sat where he is in a hospital bed; who exactly it is that’s feeding him and conversing with him. In fact, he forgets all the way up until she stands to leave as the artificial light turns itself off and the room is filled with a pretty yellow. He forgets until she turns in the doorway to smile at him and he can’t take it and he says it:

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” before squirming and flushing beet-red instantly, shuffling down until he’s pooled himself at the bottom of his make-do bed chair with half the bed tilted up for him to eat. It’s nice now, he thinks, coiling closer to the bent mattress. Something to push back into. “I mean, I…I didn’t mean to try to…I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to.”

Jo’s eyes turn soft again, big brown orbs wide and crinkled with softened skin as she smiles sadly over at him. “It’s okay, kiddo,” she says, just as softly, “No one would blame you if you did.”

And then she leaves.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

Dean asks after his mate and brother the second the nurse comes in to check on him twenty minutes later. She smiles all soft faced, patting him down onto the newly lowered bad and soothing him with head rubs and soft sounds. It’s infuriating and utterly patronising but, to be honest, it feels pretty fucking awesome, so he holds back the growl and snappy remark he might have given before this catastrophe, and he sits there like the image of obedience. He misses contact. That’s not, you know, forced upon him by evil black-haired mates or wrestled for from sappy little brothers.

Dean misses his brother. So fucking much, it hurts.

“Well, honey,” she says after a round of checking out his vitals. Her hand leaves and it takes almost everything inside of Dean to stop himself from all out freaking _mewling_. “I know Dr Novak is somewhere in the building, so it wouldn’t be any bother to call for him. And as for your _adorable_ little brother,” she pauses to scrunch her face at him in a giant grin, “I think he’s still entertaining himself with your handsome mate-in-law down at the canteen.”

“Mate-in-law?” Dean asks, dubious. What _mate-in-law_? Castiel has _siblings_? Jesus.

She smiles down at him again, reaching out a stray hand to push aside his tiny bangs. “Ah, our own Mr Gabriel,” she says, eyes slightly wispy as she apparently daydreams for whoever the hell this guy is. “ _The_ Dr Novak himself was here not long back too, and between you and me, you’re lucky you were dead sleeping like you were.” And she grins again. Dean thinks she’s totally from Minnesota. “So, puppy you want me to grab them for ya, huh? I know Dr Novak,” she cups her words with the back of her hand in mock secrecy, “your handsome one,” she whispers and winks, “is abso-possi-tutely dying to see you conscious. You’ve had him worried sick.”

Yeah. Sick with something alright. Psychopath.

“Well, I’ll get them for ya, how’s about that?” and then she’s whisking herself away, out the door and down the corridor before it squeaks itself shut.

And _then_ Dean has the time to panic.

Castiel’s gonna be here any second, with Sam, with this freaking _Gabriel_ dude…maybe with the apparently infamous other Dr Novak, who the hell knows, right?

Only Dean knows one thing, and he knows that for sure. Castiel still needs to punish him. Dean wasn’t where he was supposed to be—and whether that was half conscious after some heavy-Drop, shitty decision making  or not, he still wasn’t where he was told. He was naked, sure, and Castiel carried him to the bed, but that was not the same, and Dean’s pretty sure the alpha won’t count it either, especially because it didn’t end with Dean’s ass on fire and humiliation like a swamp drowning him.

So there’s only one damn thing for it, and maybe if Dean can be good; prove how good he can be for Castiel, then the alpha can forgive him once they’re done and coddle him like Dean didn’t allow last time. He needs that. He fucking craves it. His mate. His partner. He feels fucking _raw_.

He’s wearing a hospital gown, so he shouldn’t have to take it off. He’s bare underneath as compensation, and last time they’d done this Castiel had kept his tops on, so he probably won’t mind the gown. Hopefully. Either way though, he props himself seriously slowly up against the wall first, face against it and ass angled toward the door, before manoeuvring back and down, onto all fours. He knows his ass is on perfect fucking display, and he knows Nurse Minnesota could walk back in and see his dumb little omega all out on display, but he can’t worry about that now; because the only person this is meant for is Castiel. The only person he needs to accept this and get the punishment over with so he can have comfort is his mate. So nothing else matters.

Although Sammy’s eager little, “Dean!” as he slams through the door sends a cascade of ice down his spine, Dean can’t move from this spot. Not yet. He needs forgiveness. He _needs_ his alpha. The confused little pup stops somewhere near the door—Dean can’t exactly see him—and echoes his scent of relief and sorrow out into the space, almost choking Dean with it. He doesn’t move. He can’t move. “…Dean, what are you doing?”

“Castiel,” Dean says ( _whines_ ). “I just…I need to talk to him, okay? Then, I…I wanna talk to you too.”

“Well, ain’t that one sight for sore eyes?” comes another voice, a stranger voice, but Dean doesn’t have time to pay attention to whom he’s assuming to be Gabriel. They can meet later, once this is out of the way. This is more important.

“Dean…Dean, you’re shaking,” Sam whispers, his voice a few inches closer. Dean yips back at him in saddened reply, because he damn well knows he is. It’s not the hypothermia ( _Jo said_ ) anymore—not really—and he knows he’s uttering these dumb little sounds into the air for no apparent reason, but he _can’t worry about that right now._ He _can’t_. They need to understand that Dean _needs_ his alpha.

Just…just please.

“Hey, kitten,” Gabriel says, and Dean doesn’t like him already. “Now, what do you need to talk to my brother about looking like that, huh?” …he’s an alpha. Fuck. Fucking fuck.

“I…” Dean utters, but he can’t turn. He can’t, he just needs Castiel to see him, to see how good he can be. He can convince Gabriel after, take the punishment of disobeying him after. Right now, he knows Castiel will soothe him once they’ve finished, he promised. He’d even let Dean stay in their _room_. “Need Cast-tiel. Please, sir, can I just…I just need him.”

“You reek of fear, puppy,” he says, and he’s too close now, Dean’s going to have to move to avoid him and that won’t be good at all, he needs to be prepared. “You need to be soothed, you’re better off under the covers. Strict orders to keep warm, right?”

“No, no,” Dean insists, shuffling lower to rest on his elbows and thighs. “Castiel knows. He’ll know. I just need him.”

“Gabriel?”

 _Finally_! Alphaalphaalphaalphaalphaalphaalphaalpha—

“ _Alpha_ …” Dean gasps, rutting higher again and offering his resentment as one bare, maybe still slightly red, ass.

“Dean what are you…oh Christ, baby, no, no, no, it’s okay, it’s alright,” and then he’s _touching_ Dean, he’s actually touching him and everything in the world feels good again and the dampness on Dean’s cheeks isn’t from tears, and the whining like a siren isn’t coming from him…but he’s _back_. And it feels like the best bitter-sweet relief he’s ever indulged in. He _needs_. _Please_.

“Thirteen,” he hastens to tell his alpha, righting himself once he’s realised he’s collapsed again, sturdy on his all fours once more, but pushing one side into his warm alpha because they both need that, Dean knows.

“The fuck did you do to him?” Gabriel hisses, and Castiel’s hand is on the small of Dean’s back, pushing him down and offering hushes and whispers of encouragement, so he must want…he wants Dean more _comfortable_ instead of straining on his hands and knees, he wants him stable. He’s being kind. He’s being good and Dean wants him now. He goes without resistance, tucking closer to the soft and perfect body perched on the side of the bed, tilting his ass to offer the apples of it to his mate because that’s where he likes best. Dean’s good, see? Dean’s so good for his mate.

“I’m…I’m fixing it Gabriel, just take Sam outside, would you? Please?”

“What does ‘thirteen’ mean?” Gabriel asks, and Dean whines because that’s the reminder, the reminder of how bad he can be too, how wrong and stupid he is when he’s not thinking properly, and he presses out another,

“ _Thirteen_ ,” because Castiel might not have heard that first one. It’s okay. Dean needs him to know, so he’ll just tell him.

“Gabriel, damn well leave it, will you? I’ll talk to you in a minute.” Mm. Castiel’s so warm. So perfect.

“Not in a damn _minute_ , Castiel. Now. What does thirteen mean to him?”

“Thirteen?” Dean tries again, not even daring to peer up just yet. He needs to wait this out for now, bide his time. Wait for the strikes and then he can feel wanted again.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice is pulled taut and it’s wrong. It’s sad and wrong and bad and Dean did that. He should…comfort. But Cas is…oh God. Dean doesn’t know, he doesn’t… “Cas, what’s wrong with him?”

“Sam, wait outside for a moment, will you? Gabriel will take you—”

“Now, Cas!” and Dean whimpers at that one because Gabriel might not be his alpha but he’s an alpha all the same. He still has every right to discipline Dean if Cas gives him permission. He’s under twenty-one. Mama sold him. He’s fair game now. “What the _hell_ does thirteen mean?”

“It was…”Cas starts, and Dean whines his apologies for the first time for being so useless. For telling his own alpha to leave his own bedroom. Pathetic. _Useless_. “The number of times I struck him. He needed to say thirteen for it to be over, and he couldn’t manage it, so I…I left him.”

“You,” Gabriel starts, and that is fucking it, Dean is not leaving his ass out in any direction of an angry alpha and he is crawling forwards and plastering himself to Castiel’s back, mimicking Cas with one leg hanging off the bed, but he tucks the other to his chest. Protection. He grips Castiel’s jumper in his fingers and he prays. He prays for Sammy. Tiny Sammy trembling in his brand new jeans and soft grey t-shirt. Shaggy hair too curled at the ends to look like anything other than ‘pup’, and eyes too big to show malice or cruel intent. Dean’s perfect little Sammy on the verge of tears because of him.

And Gabriel. Terrifying, leather-jacketed Gabriel. Angry, angry, angry Gabriel glaring at Cas and Dean and exuding his rage into their small room and Dean’s scared of him. He’s fucking terrified.

“You spanked him,” Gabriel spits, stepping closer. Dean ducks behind Castiel shoulder and dips closer, burying into his alphas security because he’s offering it and Dean’s omega…Dean _needs_. “You spanked him, made him fucking _count_ , and then you left him? You left him to sink into his own Drop and you did absolutely _fuck all_ about it? And you were fucking surprised that he couldn’t handle it? What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He’s too close, too close, please, please… Gabriel pauses in his pacing, lifting the hand that had rubbed at his scalp for swift seconds to stare down at Castiel, “He thought you were gonna hit him again, didn’t he? He’s been in hospital for two days, nearly died from his own damn accord and he must be aching like one fucking bitch,” he breathes out a sarcastic laugh and Dean flinches. He was wrong, he did wrong and he’ll be hit again, they’ll hit him, “and all he cares about is pleasing _you_? Well, I’ll tell you what, Cassy, you ever pull shit like that again? I’ll take him away from you so fast you won’t even begin to _think_ the word mate, I can assure you.”

Take…take Dean away? Why? He wasn’t that bad, was he, he didn’t do too wrong, he thought…he thought he was doing right just now, he thought he was being good. Doesn’t that count for something? And he knows how bad he was before, how disgusting he was screaming his hatred at his mate, his own baby brother, but he was half punished for it, right? One more spanking and he’ll be off the hook. He…he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to leave his good mate.

“Understand?”

Castiel nods.

“Good. Now fucking soothe him, will you? You’re still his damn alpha, brother, do your duty. I’m taking Sammy for some ice-cream, and when I get back I want him in your lap, okay?”

Lap. Lap’s good, that means spanking, like that first time, right? Yeah. Cas can punish him good and proper now and then they can forget it, they can move on and Dean can be good again.

Dean doesn’t register when Castiel stands. He doesn’t think to catch himself, or halt the fall with the foot dangling to the floor. And when he slams into the linoleum, everything’s…still.

Castiel’s moving above him, but it’s muted, slow. Dean thinks he’s bending down to grab him from the floor and soothe him before the muted ache from before can blossom fully into unadulterated _pain_ in his tender body…but it’s like slow motion. Sammy’s gasping, raising slowed hands to his mouth as it curls in horror and he’s stepping closer. Gabriel’s moving with intent too, striding in extended steps over to him splayed on the floor to join his brother, Dean’s brother as they coddle him and ‘care’.

But they don’t…they don’t care, do they? Castiel has raped him and hit him, he’s bought him a cage and a spanking paddle. Sam tells him to nut up or shut up, and he doesn’t give a shit that Dean’s so close to the edge that the next time he submerges himself in ice cold water, he’s not keeping his head above level. Gabriel is a stranger.

And you know what Dean wants?

He wants to fucking _scream_.

So that’s exactly what he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Aftermath of Dean's suicide attempt, he won't be back in the right head-space for a while, so bare that in mind. He's terrified of Castiel at this point, and he's blaming himself, even asks to be hit.


	7. Trying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.

Dean spends the next few hours propped up, trembling, on his skinny knees in the centre of his hospital bed; hands curled into the sleeves of his recently procured, oversized sweater, and one plump bottom lip sucked in and chewed between his teeth. It was only once his incessant noise had ceased bare hours before, practically punched from his lungs that he’d pulled himself up there with a defiance Castiel hasn’t gone a day without witnessing and now there he sits, like an obedient and guilty animal simply awaiting his punishment.

Castiel’s practically certain he’s up there to simply keep himself from curling on the sticky hospital flooring in that space between bed and nightstand, but considering the only sounds uttered between red-bitten lips have been bitten off whines, they don’t exactly have a way of knowing for sure.

The air’s polluted with Dean’s scent. No one speaks. The only sounds in the room are Dean’s laboured little breaths; Castiel’s shifting in his plastic, padded seat; the cars and odd ambulance noises from beyond the window.

And so Castiel starts when his phone buzz interrupts the stale peace of the room’s air—Dean’s eyes barely even flicker, focused as intently as they are on the fiddling motion of his fingers at woollen sleeves pulled low enough to cover them. Castiel sighs beneath his breath, pulling the device from the pocket as it turns silent, buzzing again, and again until Castiel pulls it to his ear, pinching the bridge of his nose between his spare thumb and forefinger as he huffs out an irritated, “Yes?”

“Don’t fucking talk like that in front of him, you think he needs to hear you pissy right now? ‘Cause he doesn’t, Cas. Seriously. What’s he doing anyway, you got anything from him yet? Has he eaten? I sent Donna up a second ago with some food from the canteen, and no offence, lil’ bro, your hospital food sucks ass—”

“Gabriel,” Castiel snaps out an interruption, before becoming belatedly away of piercing green eyes boring into him from the bed; a sharp slap of distress pulsing into the room in the midst of a barely audible whine. “Excuse me please, Dean,” he mutters after a short second of deliberation, lifting from the cheap armchair and quickly finding his way from the room. The click of the door shutting behind him releases his senses from his mates suffering, though doing absolutely nothing for the turmoil still churning inside his own chest. He can practically hear his brother’s words, that’s the least he deserves, the very least, after everything he’s put his mate through in the past few hours. Weeks. The practical child currently on suicide watch after an already failed attempt in Castiel’s own home, in his _bed_ , in—

“Cas! Castiel, for fuck’s sake!” comes a tinny call from the speaker on his phone, and Castiel lifts the thing until it’s pressed into the side of his face, hard edge harsh against his ear. Christ, it feels good. He makes a noise of acknowledgement so his brother can cease his calling out and actually make sense and fix this mess _now_ , “you’re out of the room, right?” he asks, and Castiel nods with a clammy palm to his forehead before remembering Gabriel can’t actually see him.

“Yes,” he replies instead, moving backwards until the back of his skull can collide harshly with a satisfying _clunk_ against the plaster of the wall, rolling his shoulder blades back to tuck there. “You were right, of course,” he sighs. “I frightened him.”

Gabriel’s trademark huff is an audible representation of his hallmark eye roll, and Castiel’s inner pup cringes back from learnt childhood experiences. Alpha Gabriel is a terrifying Gabriel. Even an eye roll can shrink you back from whence you came, and the following raised voice brings the shackles of Castiel’s throat into full alert. “I’ll bet it fucking did,” cursing, another bad sign. “You are one dumb fucking alpha, you know that?”

“Hey…what’s happening?” comes a clear enough second voice, and Castiel’s heart drums faster at the high note of his omega’s pup of a brother, and he’s reminded for the billionth time in the last few days just how much of an oblivious bastard he truly is. How terrible a care giver he’s become, not even… _noticing_ the turmoil churning inside his own mates head, how disgusting he’s apparently treated his life partner—the _child_ he’s supposed to be mentoring. Driving him to suicide. To not wanting to be near him so much that he considered death a better option than another second under Castiel’s guardianship. Fucking Christ, he drove a _sixteen year old boy_ to _suicide_.

“Snap out of it, little brother, I’ve had just about enough of the moping,” comes Gabriel’s bored voice, that irritating under beat of humour and sarcasm, and Castiel can hear the mutter as he turns from the mic, “Yeah, Sam, I’m aware, just gimme a minute…I know you do, bucko, I know. Just gimme a second, and I promise…right, well…good,” before he’s back once more with a slightly less threatening sigh and the offer of, “Talk to him while he’s eating, keep him distracted, okay? Don’t order him to eat if he doesn’t want to, but encourage it if he refuses. Just…talk to him, alright? Christ, let him know who I am—I’m pretty sure after our first meeting he’s not exactly feeling particularly brave about me just yet, so, you know, reassure him. Tell him about Donna and Jo and Ash. About the hospital. Once his scent’s better, you can move closer, give him something to touch. Again, do _not_ go forcing anything on him, alright? Go slow. Ask him. Tell him he’s alright, and if he asks about punishment again, tell him a trip to the hospital was punishment enough for a thousand upsets, okay? Cas?”

As if Castiel would actually _spank_ him, when he was struggling to hold his own weight on weakened limbs, as if he could actually _do_ that…but Dean obviously wouldn’t know that, would he? Especially this little thing they seem to have now, one that cries ‘ _thirteen’_ reeking of terror and distrust, the one that falls to the floor and screams his voice hoarse, then practically shuts himself down once he remembers his ‘position’. The one that fucking kneels on the bed when Castiel encourages him to climb there on shivering hands and feet…The one that Castiel was going to punish by beating him with a _belt…_ like a slave. Fucking…what the hell was he even _thinking?_ Was he?

“I nearly beat him with my belt,” Castiel spits the admission to his big brother, once again crawling to him for help like he does with every other aspect of his pitiful little life. If only he’d fucking gone sooner to this expert, asked questions, even scoured the damn internet for something more important than pretty green collars and décor-suited beds for newly mated omegas. “I had sex with him when he smelt like fear. I ordered him to the Sanctum when he ran from it, when he was scared enough to lose control of himself. I ignored him when he needed me. I lead him to attempt suicide. Gabriel, I broke him. I bought him non-consensually from his life, and I dragged him to my home against his will, mated with him against his will. I clearly don’t deserve him. And he certainly did nothing to deserve me.”

There’s a weighted silence as Castiel pauses for that to really sink in, in his own mind and his brother’s. Because…he never really thought of this whole thing in that light—hell, he never even shone a light on it before now. Before the attempted suicide of his young mate, and now…now that’s all that matters. Castiel, abusive mate. Piece of shit alpha, that’s fucking him. Fucking…fuck.

What the fuck did he do?

“What do you want me to say Cas?” Gabriel replies in a resigned, disappointed voice, and Castiel’s long-since-aged pup is whining over it. Disappointing any member of his family had always tasted like death; disappointing Gabriel? Feels like the fucking plague. “That you’re wrong? That uprooting a barley omega from his nest and dragging him halfway across the country to a new mate, new surroundings, new scents, was a good idea? That I think him forgiving you for everything you’ve put him through is even an option right now? ‘Cause I don’t. And you know that. I know you do. But right now, you do what you can, because like it or not, he’s stuck with you now, and he damn well needs you. He needs a familiarity because once a-fucking-gain, he’s uplifted from his surroundings and thrust somewhere new—and there you are, smack bang in the centre, _once_ _again_. Comfort him, Cas. Soothe him. He fucking needs his alpha right now, and when I get back up there he better damn well know who I am and what I stand for, you understand me?” Castiel nods silently again, but his brother seems to understand anyway. “Good. Wait until after the food arrives so he doesn’t get smothered by that dumb scent o’ yours, alright?”

“I’ll take it into him when Donna arrives,” he assures, before offering a short goodbye to his brother and young mate-in-law, and tucking his phone back into his pants.

Dean’s lips were blue. He wasn’t even shivering—didn’t even react for a moment as Castiel hauled him from the bath and swaddled him in towels and sheets. Not until emerald eyes flickered open; full, trembling lips parted and the word ‘thirteen’ was uttered from between them did he flinch for even a second. He fainted, after that, wouldn’t respond to Castiel’s calls and panic, flesh ice cold to the touch, heartbeat indeterminable. He was practically dead to the world and Castiel, and he, the damn surgeon, could do fuck all about it. His boy was trapped in that severe state between life and fucking death and all he did—all he could do—was stand there flapping about and practically screaming for an ambulance.

They sent Jo, which was a godsend. She was fast and efficient, and Ash just as much so, and Dean was on the stretcher and bared to nosy neighbours who’d heard in passing about Novak’s new mate—the first glance they get of that angelic face it’s unconscious and passed out on a stretcher—within moments.

And, Christ above, when those eyes had fluttered sandy lashes on thankfully flushed cheeks, Castiel has never felt such euphoria in his entire existence. Even when that heart monitor climbed to worrying levels, his omega’s heart was _beating_ in his heaving chest; and even though he got banished to the back of the ambulance, his omega had enough mind in that pretty head of his to understand that Castiel was bad to him. He was aware. Alive. Beautiful. He hated Castiel, of course, and that is never a fun experience to live through, but he was _breathing_. His beautiful boy was breathing.

An innocent number four days ago; the utter Bane of his existence since his boy hadn’t managed it.  But the thing…the thing is, Castiel knows. He knows the dangers of leaving an omega to their Drop after punishment, he knows that no matter what the trembling things say, aftercare is imperative once the punishment is followed out. You shouldn’t make them stew with worry over the next time; they shouldn’t have to keep themselves collected after a spanking; they should have mates to soothe them, assure them they are forgiven and all is well. Dean didn’t receive that, of course. That terror of being struck with a surprise like the ‘cage’, of being given a room he surely thinks of as a punishment, had made him react like any human is prone to; panic. And for Dean, that didn’t mean crashing into the nearest alpha he could get his delicate hands on and sucking in that scent, it didn’t mean clinging to his own mate and begging him for an explanation. Dean reacted differently, behaved rashly as he’s apparently prone to do, but either way, he still panicked and he still needed comfort.

Almost whipping him, shoving welts onto his skin for losing control, was not comforting. Castiel didn’t comfort. He punished and Dean thought…he actually thought Castiel would rape him. It was both sobering and disgusting at the exact same time, but honestly, maybe the only thing that stopped Castiel from withholding a comfortable seated position for at least over a week with the whip of leather against his _perfect_ little backside.

And, goddamn, he _wanted to punish him_.

Sam didn’t deserve that insult; the vile, untrue confession spilled from Dean’s trembling lips, that’s true; but Dean has never deserved to feel horror in what is supposed to be his space. His territory to nest in and Castiel was actually naïve enough to believe the fear was simply from the change in atmosphere, the stubborn nature of a young omega.

Castiel saw red.

He didn’t soothe his mate when he needed it most, and he didn’t appease him when he came for it. He was cruel to big round eyes and the scent of distress. He was…he was _evil_.

And he would never, _could_ never, blame Dean for attempting what he did. He knows that now.

God, does he know it.

“And what are you doing hanging around out here, huh?” comes a distinct, Minnesotan voice, followed with it a clean, dull scent of beta and that awful aroma of the cafeteria chocolate pudding, hamburgers and gherkins. Maybe disgusting is a harsh word, but when you have to smell it every single day, it definitely earns it’s stripes. Ugh.

“Waiting for you to bring the food,” Castiel replies amiably, taking care to rid the bite from his voice and offer up a complacent little smile. Donna grins back at him, handing over the tray.

“Well, here you go,” she says. “And tell that poor pup in there that Gabriel says Sammy picked it all out for him. You tell him his brother’s still got him right on the mind, you hear?”

Right. “Of course,” Castiel says, nodding slightly in dismissal for a few seconds, before she finally gets the hint with a wide, understanding grin before darting off back down the widened corridor.

Castiel turns to start opening the door into Dean’s room, heart hammering in his chest, stomach roiling at the thought of food, when Donna stops in her tracks once more and turns back. “Ugh, Cas? Another Dr Novak has told me he wants to meet the little tyke while, and I quote, ‘Castiel isn’t still keeping him under lock and key’. What should I tell him?”

…Fuck. Fucking… _fuck_.

Michael cannot see Dean like this, he would never understand, he…he’d simply make it worse. He’d blame Dean for being weak, he’d hurt him…and for the first time in Castiel’s life regarding Michael, he knows what he wants to do. He wants to say no to his big brother.

“Tell him not today, Donna. Dean doesn’t need visitors,” he says, cracking the door slightly and sucking in that exquisite scent.

“Righty-ho,” she calls, and then she’s gone. For good.

Castiel sighs, but says nothing else on the notion. Dean doesn’t need that right now.

He’s exactly where he was ten minutes ago, knelt obediently in the centre of the tilted bed—he doesn’t even have to jolt upright once his alpha enters the room, he’s already as straight backed as can be. Castiel smiles at the inquisitive eyes tracing him, low beneath long lashes, but the boy simply removes them again, sinking them back to his now still fingers—still coiled up in the soft fabric of Castiel’s old sweater.

Castiel sighs silently, and moves to place the tray on the side table, manoeuvring it until it’s over the bed and the food is practically beneath Dean’s nose. He glances in it’s direction for scarce, tense seconds, before darting his soft gaze away once more, to the window sill now apparently, eyeing up the line of paint.

Castiel smothers a not-so-subtle cough into his fist, but he gains no attention. Dean simply huffs in a jolting sigh come yawn, before resolutely focusing on the potted plant bare metres in his limited distance.

“Dean,” Castiel tries, skirting any dangerous nicknames until he’s truly discovered what the omega responds well to. Until he has learnt his pup inside and out. With consent. The boy doesn’t even glance his way though, so he tries once more with, “Dean,” a little more alpha, until those orbs hover over to him again. He blinks heavily and Castiel smiles. “Are you tired?” he asks, but the boy simply shrugs after a long second, scanning Castiel’s body with worn out eyes. “Alright. Well, Dean, I would like for you to eat something, keep your strength up,” he says, aiming to keep a hold of his puppy’s attention. “Doctor’s orders,” he jokes, though it gets no reaction beyond a slow glance at the dull looking food. Castiel blanches slightly at the phrasing once he realises, quickly reinserting, “ _Advice_. Doctor’s advice. Though I do strongly recommend it. I could retrieve something else for you if you’d like? Gabriel said Sam picked this for you, but if you don’t fancy it, I could easily—”

“This is fine,” comes a scream-hoarse voice, and slim fingers sneak out from beneath the crisp edges of an oversize beige sweater, moving to pick idly at the hamburger, before settling heavily on the carton of milk.

“You aren’t being scrutinized right now Dean, just so you know. You don’t have to kneel for me here.”

And another flood, damn _tsunami_ of guilt flushes over Castiel when that god-like face of his turns up to him and simply blinks. Like he doesn’t believe him. Like he’ll be punished if he moves even slightly. Christ.

“Your back must be sore by now, little one,” they just _come out_ , “why don’t you rest for a little while, just while you eat, and if you want to go back to kneeling—if that’s where you feel comfortable right now—then that’s what you do. Alright?”

Inch by inch he slinks his legs from under him, eyes glowing as they stare at Castiel, milk carton clutched in white knuckles, before he settles onto his reddened backside and crosses his legs Indian style in front of him. Castiel smiles his praise and nods for him, assuring.

“Good boy,” he says, beaming internally when his boy goes slowly back to piercing the straw into the hole. Clever little mite he is, so perfect and soft and smooth…

No. Not now, not yet. Not for a long time. God.

Dean pokes at the hamburger once more, once the milk has been sipped, picking it between his hands and raising it slowly to his bite-swollen lips.

“I’ve never discussed Gabriel with you, have I?” Castiel asks after his first bite, aiming not to distract him from the food, even if he is trying to from something else. The boy peers up at him and shakes his soft head. “Well, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, Gabriel is my older brother. One of four alpha siblings, actually. Michael, the eldest, is also a doctor. He has ownership of two omegas; Elijah—his primary, and Sophia—his secondary.” Castiel eyes his own solitary omega to deem a reaction from his mate-in-law having custody over two young omegas, but Dean seems…resigned. Fed up of everything really, so Castiel simply sighs and carries on, watching Dean take another small bite from his burger as he explains further. “Lucifer was second born,” and Castiel smiles when Dean’s ears perk up slightly at what he assumes is the name. “We were all named after angels,” he explains, “and the biblical Lucifer was first an angel—the bearer of light. Not that it fits my brother, but it has an explanation none the less.”

Dean’s soft lips quirk slightly at that, a quick pulse of humour joining the perfect current of his scent, before it disappears once more and he goes back to his food, picking at the tomato placed in a separate segment on the tray.

Castiel carries on, “Lucifer has custody of one omega, a young girl called Meg. I think you’d like her, actually. She’s very, uh… _feisty_ , so to speak. He’s also mated with a beta called Lilith, and they both work and live in New York, as corporate lawyers. Actually, I think Meg might be pregnant, if the family rumours are correct. God help them, is all I’ll say,” and Dean smirks just barely again, but enough for Castiel to grin for him. Not that he looks up from a lettuce leaf currently being nibbled. Castiel carries on.

“And then there’s Gabriel—no omega’s, no children. He works as a social worker for damaged omegas—saved from abusive situations or assisted in newly mated circumstances. He’s very good at his job. He cares about omegas maybe slightly more than my traditionalist family would feel comfortable with, but he’s never been interested much with family politics anyway. He would like to speak with you, when your feeling up to it. We don’t have to discuss it right now, but…” Dean’s hands have gone stock still clasped around the half eaten burger once more, his eyes squeezed closed and his lips pressed thinly together. Castiel steps in quickly, offering a remedy to that conversation and says, “It’s alright Dean, we won’t discuss anything yet, I promise. It’s okay, just keep eating.”

He does, though it’s slow going, tucking his teeth into the browned bun of the burger and tearing a tiny section off before chewing on it carefully, swallowing before Castiel actually starts to speak again.

“Good boy,” and Dean’s throat offers a short chitter. “Anna is the fourth alpha in a row to our family, and I am the fifth. She works closely with the government as an interpreter travelling a lot to too many countries to keep count of. She can speak seven different languages. Her betan mate—Gadreel—owns a bar just outside of Hollywood, and they have two twin girls, Marin and Margo. We have a younger brother, an omega named Samandriel, who still lives with our father at home.”

Dean finishes the hamburger when Castiel finishes explaining the foundations of his family, and he moves back to the milk with a curly fry in his fingers as Castiel explains Jo, Ash and Donna.

“She’s been a friend since I first started working here,” Castiel says of Jo, smiling wistfully at the trying memory of their first meeting. “I think it’s safe to say we didn’t get along right away, but after a while we began to see more eye to eye. She has a relationship with an omega named Charlie—a girl she met with through Gabriel. I think you’d get along with her too. She enjoys Star Wars maybe even slightly more than you do,” which earns from Dean a snort of appreciation, before he’s practically sucking on the end of a fry. “Ash is married to his work, though not at the hospital. The things he can do with a computer are abnormal, trust me. And Donna…she’s a very kind, slightly ditzy nurse who has been with me since the very beginning. And she has a huge crush on Gabriel.”

Another soft smile. At least he’s listening, right?

Dean’s moved onto the pudding now, seemingly disinterested in the remainder of his food—at least four fries still on the tray, most of a slice of tomato, chunks of the bun and nearly all of the lettuce. Castiel would tell him to eat more, if they weren’t in this situation. He’d all but force the issue onto him, maybe feed the boy himself if he refused, but for now, Castiel stays silent. If he doesn’t eat dinner, they can put the IV line back into him. Maybe Gabriel could convince him, or Sam.

Castiel waits for the omega to scoop into the bottom of the pudding cup with the spoon, echoing the sounds of metal scraping plastic with mindless chatter about the hospital: the old lady in his own wing who talks in her sleep about oranges; his boss; his nurses. By the time Dean finishes the pudding, drains the milk and pushes the table away to crawl back up to his knees, Castiel’s decided that talking about this is currently inevitable. Dean’s now fed, but the seemingly permanent stench of fear is still etched into his scent, his hands have starting picking at his sweater once more and, Christ, he’s gone back to kneeling.

He needs reassurance, and neither of them are in a position to trade that right now, so the conversation is an inevitability.

Surprisingly, it’s Dean who brings it up first. Then again, the little mite has always had a way of evading expectation, and opening his softened mouth and asking, “Do you want to punish me now?” is his sure-fire way of doing it.

Castiel’s stomach drops all the same.

“No, little one,” because that didn’t seem like an issue when he offered the nickname earlier. Dean’s shoulders slump slightly before the one closest to Castiel hitches to his ear in defence, before he breathes in a deep breath and lets it go in jolting little sighs. Castiel inches forward in his chair slightly, looking up at his young charge. “And I don’t just mean not now. I think we can call all of this punishment enough, don’t you?” Dean glances over at him, eyes wide beneath lowered brows, and the gesture is so heart-breaking, Castiel barely has a choice but to stand as slowly as he’s able and toe closer to the bed. Dean shuffles over for him, still on his knees, and Castiel seats himself—similar to before—with one leg propped onto the mattress, and the other hanging over the side, holding him up. “We’ll wipe the slate clean of punishment, yes?” Dean’s gaze shifts to the side and back again, that notch in his brow saying he doesn’t quite believe. “Dean…” Castiel says, interrupted by the short outburst of that hoarse voice—

“But that’s not the same. You…you said that spanking me was my punishment, this isn’t the same thing. You won’t forgive me if you don’t… _do_ it.”

He’s shivering again, limbs quaking at the edges as his gaze zips from the white blanket to Castiel’s face and back again, his discomfort obvious as he avoids contact and practically begs for a forgiveness he earned about the second he begged Castiel not to rape him. The following spanking and threat of the following day were simply follow ups of a punishment he had to carry out because he’d already threatened it.

Castiel moves just an inch closer, edging to his little, underdeveloped omegan boy as he offers a weak explanation, “You’re forgiven, little one, I promise. I won’t be spanking you again because I deem your punishment already over. Alright?” Dean nods after long seconds, but it’s still clear he’s not all believing. Castiel lets it drop for now. They have more pressing issues—issues that might make him see this clearer as of now.

“Sweetheart,” he tries, pushing a light hand onto his omega’s tense thigh and squeezing slightly when Dean mewls, barely audibly, at the contact. “We need to talk, don’t we?” Dean nods again, eyes slipping closed. “Good. Now are you comfortable where you are right now? You don’t have to kneel if you’re doing it for me, but if this is where you’re comfortable, I won’t move you.” Silence; fluttering lashes over flushed cheeks. Castiel chuckles kindly and rubs his hand against the thin, striped fabric of his pyjama bottoms. “Sweetheart, this isn’t going to work too well if we can’t communicate. How about I move the bed higher and you come sit on my lap, hmm? Would that be alright? Or is this better?”

Dean gives himself a few seconds to consider his options, eyes wide now and focused on Castiel’s wide hand splayed over his skinny thigh, before he nods in decision, moves from the middle of the bed to hover over at the edge, and looks up at Castiel expectantly.

“Lap,” he says, tacking on a quick “please,” as his eyes flit around again.

Castiel smiles warmly for him. The bed moves slowly when Castiel finds the remote to move it until it’s almost perpendicular, as high as it can go, but he settles himself as it does so. He coaxes Dean over and holds his clammy little hands in his own as he clambers up to kneel over Castiel’s lap, thighs splayed on either side of his own. Castiel palms his thighs once more when Dean takes to clinging to his sleeves.

“Better?” and Dean nods. “Good, sweetheart. Now, Dean, would it be alright, do you think, if we could speak as candidly with each other as possible? If I made a vow that whatever is said in this room will never be used against the other, would that be good?” Dean’s gaze jumps as high as Castiel’s chin before dancing back to his fingers coiled into Castiel’s sleeves. “Hmm, sweetheart? I won’t judge you or blame you for anything you tell me right now. I promise you, alright? And if I do, I want you to tell Gabriel,” a quick decision but one he needs to make nonetheless. “If something happens that you don’t like, I want you to wait by the door for Gabriel and tell him the second he comes in, okay? He won’t let me harm you. I promise. Alright?”

Long seconds roll past without a reaction beyond quick glances to the scruff on Castiel’s throat, before he nods again, letting himself slump slightly, scent tacky with slight distrust and embarrassment. Castiel squeezes his warm thighs.

“Good. Good boy. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? When I found you at the convenience store. Could you tell me why you were stealing the candy bar, sweetheart?” A peak in the fear scent, but Castiel soothes him, “Hey, remember what we said? Honesty. No judgement.”

Dean gulps—the jump of his Adam’s apple sharp as he shuffles on Castiel’s thighs.

“…’cause I could,” he offers simply. “Sammy likes Tootsie Rolls and Mama doesn’t like us eating things like that.” He pauses, smirking fleetingly before saying, “Plus Jackson always calls me a hole and he gets in trouble with his boss every time I steal stuff…. _stole_ stuff. I guess.”

Castiel chuckles. “Alright. What about after, when I came to your house. You were clearly upset. I apologise for not asking your permission—for not living in a hotel for two weeks whilst you went through your heat to get you accustomed to me and say a real goodbye to Missouri. Moving so suddenly was extremely taxing on you, wasn’t it?”

Dean offers a self-deprecating nod, and Castiel palms his knee cap. “I’m sorry sweetheart. Tell me how it felt?”

“Mama just left me,” he says immediately, body tensing under his own words. “She…she just let you take me and she never even mentioned selling me off before, so…she didn’t want me.” And his mouth downturns wickedly, and his eyes fill to the brim without spilling over. His lip begins to tremble. “No-one wants me,” he growls.

“I do,” Castiel assures instantly, moving his hands around to cup steadily at his pup’s hips, hold him close and still and warm. “I want you so much, sweetheart, I don’t even know how to behave with it.” He sucks in a huge sighs, “Alright, little one, it’s alright. How about I explain my side, hmm? If I tell you why I did what I did, why I acted like that? Yes?” Dean nods distractedly, staring down at his lap. “Alright. Well…when you were in heat, your brother and I spoke. And he told me you were stubborn beyond reason—ignorant to you own needs and desires if it became something you weren’t sure you wanted to do, so we agreed then…we would try to coax you into it. You became rude in my house, and I decided force would be a decent option to get you away from that, because I didn’t know…I _don’t_ know what you respond well to. Clearly punishment isn’t it.”

Dean starts to shiver and Castiel goes back to rubbing in warmth. “From now on, we’ll talk, yes? We’ll discuss every decision made regarding the other, and unless a serious rule is broken, I won’t punish you in such a way again. Good, little one?”

Dean squirms. “What…”

“Go on, sweetheart, it’s alright.”

“What are the rules?” he whispers, and Castiel’s heart beats from his damn chest. “Sorry. I-I should know them, I should have figured them out, I—”

“No you shouldn’t have, Dean,” Castiel sighs, “because I never went over them with you. I’m sorry, little one. This is my fault. The rules…the rules are, no lying. No rudeness. Obedience, unless you want a discussion, and when you do want that, we will go up into the Sanctum—the room upstairs?—and we will discuss what you don’t like.”

Dean’s trembling turns near violent, and Castiel has no choice but to tug him in closer, offer his throat and palm soothingly at his nape. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“The Room,” he shudders out, shoulders hunched to his ears. “The cage, I don’t…I don’t want to be in a cage. Please don’t lock me in it, I’ll be good and follow rules, I swear, I’ll be real good for you, I—”

“Alright, little one, alright, shhshh,” but the trembling doesn’t stop and his below breath begging barely ceases for a second. “The cage isn’t for punishment, Dean, it’s alright. It’s like one of your downstairs bed’s, except it’s enclosed and safe—similar to our canopied bed, yes? It has the same idea, sweetheart, it’s not a punishment, it’s okay—”

“Maybe just get there when you get there, hmm?” comes another voice, from the doorway when Castiel looks up, and Gabriel’s smiling sadly over at them. Castiel nods his entrance, and Sam practically bounds inside, clambering onto the bed and tucking himself up to Dean’s back almost instantly. He mewls for his big brother, and Dean shifts to accommodate.

“Are you better now?” he asks excitedly, tugging at Dean’s wrist until his grip falters on Castiel’s sleeve and Sam can mould his own fingers beside Dean’s. “Dean?”

“Sam,” Castiel starts, but waits for a second when Dean finally lifts his damp, reddened face from Castiel’s shoulder.

He sniffs slightly, peering up at Castiel for a second whilst frowning, before staring back at Sam and Gabriel, gaze flitting between both. Seconds later he’s in Sam’s arms with a ripped out whine, burrowing himself forcefully until the pup ends up on his back, giggling breathlessly, unsurely as his brother snuffles up harshly to him, offering a litany of taut, “I’m sorry, Sammy, sorry, real sorry, don’t hate you, please Sammy, please…”

“I’m gonna go ahead and take that as a _no_ ,” Gabriel says quietly, raising a brow at Castiel on the bed.

Castiel simply sighs. “We’re working on it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Dean's terrified.   
> Cas POV. They have a long needed discussion but it doesn't get them very far.


	8. Drop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For sometimes spoiler-type warnings, please see end notes.

They stay in hospital for another two days—

Or, well. Dean does.

Castiel takes Sam back to the house to sleep in his own new bed during the nights, leaving Dean alone in the sharply clean scent of hospital room long enough for the fog that seems to have developed around him to dissipate some—enough that by the time Castiel comes back the second day there isn’t a burning need in Dean’s gullet to obey him and kneel. The humiliation of his actions, in fact, keep his back stubbornly and fervently turned towards the alpha when he reappears to explain to Dean that he’ll be returning to work soon, and that if Dean needs him he should call for one of the nurses. Dean ignores him, obviously. Dean ignores him with his face turned into the pillow and he prays to hell that the flush of embarrassment on his cheeks isn’t enough to taint his scent with the damn thing; enough to give the asshole any kind of satisfaction.

Castiel presses kisses to Dean’s forehead—his shoulder and the backs of his hands. He sits with Dean during his lunch and ten minute breaks, long fingered hand resting on the dip of Dean's side. He tells Dean stories about Gabriel and about how Sam seems to have taken a real shining to him ( _and that sure as hell, **resolutely** pisses Dean off_ ).

He brings Sam in when he can, when he finishes school and Castiel has the time. Gabriel gives him a ride once ( _apparently he’s working a case within the hospital which is why he’s conveniently around so much—fucking **joy**_ ) but Dean actually curls his lips back to offer up his thoughts on that little proposal and they don’t do it again.

Sam sits with him on the bed and does his homework, chatters on about students and teachers and this omega girl named Suzie who broke down in front of everyone and had to have her Alpha father come save her from school ground taunts. Shifty hazel eyes peer crookedly down at Dean with that one, fingers fiddle within another new sweater, but Dean just rolls his eyes. Says _well that’s embarrassing, huh?_

Sam’s smile is watery. Dean changes the subject.

It’s on the second day, when Sam’s just arrived, and Dean’s readying himself for his dinner, before, he’s been told, he has to start packing ( _pointlessly, it’s all shoved inside a duffel bag anyway_ ), that he registers for the first, true time since he woke up and ached for his alpha, that he has to return there. To…to that fucking place.

To a cage and a spanking paddle.

To Castiel.

To Sam. His obedient little pup brother who _only wants the best for you, Dean, you know as well as I do that you need an alpha_ but _I’m sorry, Dean, God I’m so sorry_.

And yeah, Cas hasn’t hurt him in the last few days, but Dean has been holed up in his work place surrounded by people like Jo and Gabriel who hate the traditionalist views of assholes like Dean’s Alpha. It would surely be some kind of social suicide to strip Dean of his clothes and spank his ass purple, right? So Dean isn’t damn trusting the asshole. Dean isn’t trusting him for one fucking second.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam says, pausing in flicking through one of his abundance of textbooks, one finger slotted in to hold his place as wide eyes peer up just slightly at where Dean’s sat on the edge of the bed. Shaking his head a little to clear whatever the fuck it is clogging his throat, Dean smiles at him on Castiel's usual chair, however shortly. Sam grins back.

“How was lunch? Those little shits still giving you trouble?” Dean asks quietly.

Apparently over the last week or so ( _evidently_ _Dean wasn’t in the right mind frame to be told_ ) Sam’s been subjected to taunts from fellow pups at school about one thing or another—Sam’s only ever elaborated on the little fucks commenting on his height. One of them is an early developed alpha, the middle school bully and ringleader of his little fucktard bandits. Cas says he’ll speak to the school if it continues or develops into more than harsh words. Dean said he should go in now, complain while it’s still happening. Sam thinks they should both mind their own business.

“Not really, I guess,” the kid says, but his eyes sink low enough to avoid Dean altogether, hovering around his fidgeting fingers on the peeling cover of his textbook. Dean eyes him.

“Sam?”

He sighs heavily into the air, lifting his brows as if to say _well I dunno_ , but Dean’s already rumbling a soft growl in his stupid direction. Dumb kid needs to speak up if that shits still happening. Dean could get Cas to defend him…he’s pretty sure. Or maybe he could go to Gabriel.

Fuck. No, never mind.

“Nothing, really, it’s just…” he says, jolting quick little glances up at Dean and skittering them away again. It’s just starting to piss Dean off.

“Sam,” Dean growls, hopping down from the bed. “What’d they said? Have they hurt you? Touched you…shit, Sammy, have they touched you?”

With all the ‘small guy’ comments they could easily ( _stupidly_ ) assume the kid’s destined to be an omega—if they’ve put one scrawny fucking hand on Deans baby brother he’ll fucking find them and rip their cocks straight from their bodies the little shits, he’ll—

“Gross, dude, no,” Sam replies, scrunching his nose and abruptly halting Dean’s murderous train of thought. “Nothing like that…well, they haven’t come anywhere _near_ me, trust me,” he mumbles all timid like. Then starts again with the awkward fidgeting. He smells like deceit, the little turd.

“…Well?” Dean demands, arms wide.

Sam startles. “They just…they can, uh…they can smell you on me. So they make comments, you know? Like…well, they say…they say…”

“Sam?” Dean prompts softly, feeling all of a sudden the fight drain from his bones. Sam’s getting bullied because Dean’s a ‘cock-sucking-skank’, or at least something along those lines. Maybe playground comments have gotten more inventive over the last year or so; maybe they’re different all the way over here in Cali. Probably not.

“They say they wanna…knot you, I guess. Which is pretty stupid ‘cause they’ve never even met you, but I guess that doesn’t matter. And they say that I’m…doing that, too. That I’m touching you, you know, _like that_. They’re making everyone else believe it. Or I guess everyone already does.”

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean breathes, propping himself back to the bed.

Dean gets that he was bullied back in school for being what he is; that people rubbed themselves up against him as some perverted scent marking thing; pups and alphas and betas who shoved their hands down the back of his pants, flattened him against the lockers and laughed when everyone just walked past and ignored Dean’s growls. And Dean understands that he had to go through that because of the card old mother nature dealt him, and he could deal, he really could. But Sam…Sam’s still a pup. He’s still a pup who’s possibly _the_ pup least likely to be dumped into high school being stared at and called a hole, or a whore. And yet these fucks still find a way to use the gender ‘omega’ and bully people without them being marred by heats and slick and hormones. Sam’s probably an alpha in the making and he’s being bullied because he smells like omega; because his _brother_ smells like omega. No matter what Dean does, people get fucked. Sammy gets fucked.

Jesus Christ.

“Does Cas know?” Dean asks, cutting off whatever it was Sam was rambling about whilst Dean was off having his marginal non-freak out.

The kid shakes his head a little to clear it, before saying, “Yeah, man. He says he’s gonna go in on Monday about it. So it’s fine, he’ll sort it out, Dean, please stop—”

“I can…I could get him to move you,” Dean says—he thinks he could, if he tried. Cas likes Dean’s scent, he likes him knelt at his feet, eating from his fingers. He likes Dean’s slick channel and he likes fucking it. Dean can be good if it means Sam’s safe from the same threats he had to deal with. Sammy can’t handle them, not this young. Not when he has Dean to deal with, too. “He could move you to a different school and then I wouldn’t sleep with you anymore, we wouldn’t have to scent mark or…or touch too much,” that could work—he’d still smell a little like Dean but it won’t be so noticeable. “Then they’d have nothing to say, you’d be fine.”

“What? Dean, no, jeese—”

“You have to be safe, Sam, they’ll hurt you and it would be my fault, you don’t understand…”

Sam huffs with indignation, but he _doesn’t_ fucking understand, if those shits decide he’s fair meat because he smells even slightly like fuckable hole he’s screwed for the next year and a half. Sammy’s smart. He doesn’t deserve that and he doesn’t need that distraction. Not now. Hell, not ever.

“Dean, stop—”

“You kids okay?”

Gabriel. Fuck.

“Fine,” Dean says instantly, turning to face the alpha in the doorway, leaning where he is against the doorjamb. Donned in his usual leather jacket and black Henley and jeans and boots and that stupid fucking laminate around his neck that says he can go wherever the hell he wants in the hospital. He’s smirking, _again_. Asshole.

“Yeah?” he asks, all disbelieving smile and folded arms.

Dean glares at him for the one second he dares before zipping his gaze back to the laminate flooring and allowing himself to practically vibrate in an angry frustration. “ _Fine_.”

“Alright, kiddo,” he says pleasingly, stepping further into the room. “You guys both ready to head on out? Cas is in surgery ATM, doesn’t think he’ll be out for a while so I’m taking you scamps home. What do you say, McDonald’s or pizza, huh? Papa John’s?”

What…? No. No, Dean needs to speak to Cas now. He needs to sort everything out with him because tomorrow’s Friday and that means Sam’s gonna have to go back to that hell hole. Cas needs to pull him out now.

“KFC?”

And maybe…maybe Dean’s not ready to go back _there_ just yet. Not with this foreign Alpha and Dean doesn’t care if he’s Cas’ brother, or that Sammy likes him or that he’s apparently this amazingly trustworthy social worker guy. Bully to him for not _owning_ an omega. No, wow, really. Everything’s just hearsay anyway, how does Dean now if he’s telling the truth? What, he’s just gonna start trusting everyone now, huh? Yeah. Fuck off.

“Sure, kiddo, KFC it is.”

Lock Dean in the fucking cage—‘ _for you, Dean, for your own good’_ , yeah Dean’s own good, _fuck you_.

“You ready, bud?”

Jesus, if Gabriel says one fucking thing about Dean curling down for the night into one of those damn dog beds he will seriously flip out.

Does Mama know? Does she know what Dean did?

“Dean-o?”

She’d be mad at him that’s for damn sure. _The hell d’you think you’re playing at, scaring everybody like that?! You damn fool, Dean Winchester!_ She’d spank him with a spoon, he’s pretty sure.

“Dean?”

Dad wouldn’t give a shit. Maybe he’d be pissed at Dean for disobeying his alpha in the first place, but otherwise he wouldn’t care. Bobby might be more sad for Dean’s side of things, but even he wouldn’t give a shit, not really. Not at all, actually, let’s be brutally honest. The only person who gives any kind of fuck is Sammy and Dean told him he hated him. Dean was a complete dick.

No one really wants him anymore. Not _really_.

“Dean? Hello?”

Cas is gonna keep him because, hello, he just wasted like sixty grand on a disobedient omega who accidently tries to kill himself. He’s stuck now.

“Hey, kiddo,” Gabriel says, resting a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

Stunned out of his headspace and dragged back into the hospital room, Dean jolts and throws himself back onto the bed, crawling along his ass until he whacks into the headboard with a sickening _clunk_.

Gabriel winces in sympathy with the stupid _fucking_ smile on his lips like freaking _always_ and his hands are out and placating like he’s taming a wild beast…Dean’s…Dean…spaced out again. Shit.

“I, uh…” Dean tries, reaching a hand back to the mess of hair at the back of his head. Sam’s staring all wide eyed and shocked. Gabriel’s still just fucking _smiling_. Jesus Christ, is this a condition? “Sorry.”

“Hey, no harm, no foul, kitten,” he says, the bastard. Like _little one’s_ not demeaning enough. “You ready to head off?”

Dean nods slowly through his glare, pushing himself into sitting properly, before manoeuvring over the side of the bed and back into standing. Gabriel holds hands beside him, close but not touching, when Dean stumbles slightly on his feet. Another glare. Gabriel winks.

“You okay?” comes a wide eyed question.

Dean rolls his own, “Fine, Sam.”

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

They head out to the KFC a few miles out from Cas’ neighbourhood.

Sam leads Dean to a table where they sit for a few minutes, waiting for Gabriel ordering them food in the queue, silent outside of hefty sighs and awkward coughs whenever they glance up at one another. Sam knows Dean hasn’t and won’t drop the bullying shit, and Dean knows Sam’s just gonna get pissy if they bring it up right now, so they seem to both non-verbally agree to leave it for the minute.

They get stares from a few other patrons. A young alpha—maybe fourteen, maybe younger—sat with his betan family a few tables to Dean’s right stares about as blatantly as possible at Dean, pressing his legs together beneath the table to stave of his ugly fucking boner, Dean’s sure. The kid’s mom glares over at Dean every now and then. Dean ignores her as best he can. Dean tries to ignore all of them.

An alpha lady in a suit ( _about Cas' age, all sharp blonde bob and crisp white shirt_ ), tapping away at her Mac-book with a chicken wing in one hand, smiling over in his direction and winking whenever she gains Dean’s attention. A few betas in workman clothes—coated with concrete dust and mortar—outrightly discuss how wet they bet they could make him, loud enough for the people dotted around the restaurant to hear, for parents to turn in their seats and narrow disgusted eyes at both him and them for daring to give betas a reason to talk so graphically.

This. This fucking thing, this _shit_ is why Dean doesn’t like going out, not as a mated _whore,_ not stinking up the joint with his _distress_ and his _drop scent_. This is why omegas as a damn whole avoid public situations like this, so they don’t get harassed and spoken about like a piece of meat…or at least so they don’t freaking hear it when they do.

Fucking….

It’s the last damn straw when he hears the mother behind him, with the mate and the two young pups he saw when they sat down, when she loud whispers to the man beside her, “…well, if he's so insecure, they shouldn’t have brought him out in the first place then, should they.”

Dean slams himself into standing from the booth, sucks in a few breaths where his feet are trembling on the ground, his thighs pressed harshly into the tables edge and Sam’s wide eyes staring nervously up at him. Everyone’s watching him now. Everyone’s fucking staring— _he’s tall for an omega so young, he’s maturing quicker than he should, big hands for an omega._

Fuck them. Christ, fuck this.

He storms towards the bathroom to the stream of tuts and head shakes at the mouthy, disobedient omega, dirty little shit, how dare he be so rude.

“Dean!” Sammy hisses, but Dean’s far gone right now, he’s not taking this crap, not today.

He just…he wants to go home.

And not to that fucking alpha scented shit hole Castiel has him living in, with white rooms and dog beds and shit. Dean wants to go curl up in his real bed back at Mama’s house. He wants to go outside and help her with the gardening, sit inside her office with her hand in his hair, napping while she’s out there in the pharmacy doing her thing. He wants his real scent back and he wants a world where he could laugh at the omegas that stunk of alpha and roll his eyes at them when they nuzzled into grips and mewled for attention, squirmed in their seats wearing fucking _collars_.

Dean practically runs for the omega bathroom—all but shining clean, he bets it rarely ever gets used. Fuck.

The reflection staring back at him looks like fucking shit in the pristine mirror, bags beneath dull green eyes, pale lips matching pale cheeks. His hair is limp to his scalp. He looks like he hasn’t eaten for a fucking week, which…isn’t actually too far off.

His fingers are trembling when he glances down at them, curled and white around the marble-plastic basin.

He can’t do this right now. Not with Gabriel and Sammy, not without Mama. Or hell, even Castiel. At least that offers some semblance of comfort, even if it is on a basely instinctual level—he would pull Dean down to his throat by the scruff of his neck, all but force him to breathe Cas’ stench into his lungs, rub a rough hand against his spine. He would _make_ Dean relax, forget everything but his alpha, make that scent drifting into the restaurants air something better than fear and residual self-loathing. He would…he would be better than this nothing that Dean has right now. Sam’s a pup. He can’t do shit to a room full of pissy alphas and betas. No omegas. It’s late. No one to help him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, kid,” comes a strong, angry voice, and Dean’s hackles have risen like a fucking startled cat and he rears back from the mirror, staring shakily at the man— _alpha_ —stood in the doorway, filling the entire space with his ill-fitting suit and bald head, stocky, tall figure. Dean starts to shake. The man stalks forward. Dean starts to whine. “No, don't you start that shit with me, boy,” he says, blocking Dean’s exit.

 _Fuck_.

Gabriel…he must have seen. He’ll come in and he’ll save Dean, he’ll defend him, he will, Dean’s gonna be fine, they’ll just—

“Making a scene like that out there; don’t you damn well know this is a family restaurant?”

“You’re in the wrong bathroom,” Dean clips, because he can’t just fucking stand here like some damsel in distress and he can’t…he can’t _fight_. All the man has to do is throw one chubby fist into the air and bam, Dean’s out. And if that didn’t work, two fingers pinching the nape of his neck will have him mewling into a sweaty chest and don’t we all just fucking love biology?

Shit. Please, Gabriel, Cas… _please_.

“The fuck you just say to me?”

“What’s going on?” comes another voice—female, this time, beta. A smaller figure, though no less overweight, emerges from behind the bulk of a man with her hands on the hips of her cropped jeans and a flowery blouse. She eyes Dean beneath a mop of frizzy hair and a flushed face, looking him up and down and _judging_.

“This little shit’s giving me lip,” the alpha says, pointing a sweaty finger into Dean’s face.

Definitely….definitely getting harder to breathe. Shit…he’s zoning out. That head-space, it’s taking over, it’s hurting, fuck, please, he can’t—

“This is absolutely ridiculous—omega, where is your alpha right now?” she says, like he’s six not sixteen. He’s not _stupid_.

“He’s…he’s…” at the hospital. He’s not here.

Red-polished finger tips snap inches from Dean’s face, impatient and irritated. “Hey! Is he coming to meet you?”

No, he’s…Gabe said he was in surgery, he’s probably covered in blood and guts and flesh right now not here with Dean, not here to defend him—Dean shakes his head solemnly because he wishes probably about as much as they do that Cas was here right now. How fucked is that?

“Jesus, don’t tell me that pup’s looking after you?” she says, shaking her head. Dean lowers his gaze. God, he can smell himself. “You better start speaking kid or I’ll have you arrested and spending the week in a shelter. Where’s your alpha? Don't you have his collar?”

“He’s…” he’s gone, he’s not here, shit, shit, shit—

“Right, fuck this,” the alpha says—and then he’s fucking _touching_.

His meaty hand is around Dean’s shoulder, gripping to the fabric of Cas’ cardigan and pulling it and disfiguring it, Cas is gonna be mad, he’ll be angry, he…

“Don’t…don’t touch me! No! Get off me!” he can’t breathe again, he needs to…he needs to kneel for Cas and be held by him, he needs to be forgiven and touched he can’t _fucking_ , he can’t…

“Hey! Shut up,” the alpha says and he shakes Dean, knocks Dean’s head against the door-frame and he drags him out of the omega bathroom and Dean can’t _see_ , it hurts, just… _please!_

“Now who the hell does this kid belong to?” the man bellows once they’re back inside the restaurant, once all those fucking eyes are on him again and everything is _hurting_ him.

He’s Dropping. That’s what this is.

He needs his alpha.

He needs Castiel.

“ _Dean?!_ ” Gabriel. Never been happy to hear him, see him storming across the restaurant with a red face and balled hands, unless…unless he’s mad at Dean. “Get your goddamn hands off of him,” he growls, all furious, terrifying alpha. Dean drops to the floor in a heap of weakened knees when the meaty hand lets him go. He slides towards Gabriel.

“I didn't mean...I tired to tell them, I tried, I swear,” Dean gulps in an unintelligible whine and he fucking hates it. He hates this, this undeniable, all consuming feeling of weakness, of fear and that overbearing _demand_ of obedience. “Cas…please, Castiel,” because he needs his alpha. Drops weren’t like this before. Before he _belonged_ to someone else.

“This is a mated omega,” Gabriel growls and his legs are in front of Dean, defending him. Dean grips onto the denim and he doesn’t want to let go. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”

“He was mouthing off at me!” the alpha yells and Gabriel’s small, he could be hurt. Because of Dean. Because he’s useless. “What, I’m supposed to just let some kid talk shit and do nothing—just ‘cause he can push a baby outta his ass, huh?”

“We tried to ask him who his alpha was,” the beta lady says, cowed, now, in the face of two angry alphas. Dean doesn’t blame her. "He was practically stinking up the place smelling like Drop, and he's not wearing his collar, so we were checking on-"

“This is an underage, _sixteen year old_ omega who you have _forced_ into a Drop. What the hell did he say to warrant that?”

Dean tugs at the jeans in front of him, curls trembling hands around a calf and presses his face into the back of a knee. “Please, just…s’go. Please.”

“Gabe,” Sam’s wavering voice whispers, from their table, he hasn’t moved. Good. Not involved, good.

“Alright,” the small alpha snaps beneath Dean’s fingers and Dean flinches but tucks closer all the same.

“'Scuse me, sir...I’m gonna have to ask you guys to leave,” another voice says. Dean doesn’t look who.

He agrees with them.

“Yeah, fuck you very much, kid, we’re leaving, trust me. And you can back yourself right up, buddy,” Gabriel growls, snapping his teeth. Dean leaks a wet sob. “Sammy, grab the food, would ya? Shows over, assholes, that’s enough.”

Muttering begins where it was silent before and Dean curls closer, squirms tighter when Gabriel steps away from him and out of his grip.

Dean freezes in the scant seconds before warm fingers curl into his biceps, pulling him into standing and tugging him into a warm, unfamiliar chest. “Alright, sweetheart,” he murmurs, just for Dean. “Up you come, good boy, sshhh.”

Soft sobs echo sadly into the dark leather of Gabriel’s jacket, Dean’s fingers tighten up on his arms.

Everyone’s staring at them as they walk outside, Sam flanking Gabriel’s other side, gripping onto his free hand when he tucks Dean into his shoulder with his eyes peering out like a startle cat. A few people are wide mouthed, staring at them and glancing between each other. One boy, the new alpha, the one with the boner…he’s videoing them on his iPhone. He’d have gotten the whole thing, he’ll have Dean…breaking down. Again. They’ll be video evidence. Jesus Christ.

Gabriel mutters assurances all the way to the car, fingers in Dean’s hair. He coaxes Dean into the passenger seat. He lifts Dean’s hand and puts it on his own thigh, lets Dean grip onto the fabric. He tells Dean it’s okay when he says, “I did....I tired to tell them 'bout Cas, but they...they got angry at me, I didn't...didn't mean...”

“That was a Drop wasn’t it?” Sam asks from the back.

“Yeah, kiddo. It’s been a rough few weeks for the kid.”

Sam replies, but Dean doesn’t hear him. He’s already unconscious.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

“Well, that was totally worth it,” Gabriel says after possibly the biggest belch there ever was, beating his chest with a fist. Sam giggles and makes an _ew_ face.  Dean tucks his face into the man’s thigh so he’s not subjected to actually smelling it.

“That was really good,” Sammy agrees. He balls up his stained napkin and throws it into the bucket full of chicken bones and discarded corn cobs sat in the center of Cas’ coffee table. They should probably clean up before he comes back. Dean should…Dean should get up and clear this crap away. It’s his duty, right? As the omega of the house?

“Buddy, you want some more chicken?” Gabriel asks, pressing his thumb into the pressure point _right there_ , behind Dean’s ear and _fuck_ that feels nice. Dean shakes his head just slightly at the offer of more food, but presses himself back  into the warm, solid weight of the alpha’s stomach, head resting on the joint of his thigh. He whines quietly at the pressure and the alpha chuckles, pressing harder. Dean mewls for him. “You finished up, Sam?” Gabriel asks.

“Yeah, I’m done.”

“Good kiddo. You wanna go up and get started on your homework? Maybe if Cas gets back at a decent hour we can all watch some crappy movie on Netflix, sound good, bud?”

“Sure,” Sam says, scurrying into standing and wiping his greasy little mitts off on his jeans. He turns as if to run upstairs before seemingly halting himself, wide eyes floating back to Dean, curled beneath the blanket, staring blankly at the navy carpet below him with his head rested on Gabriel’s thigh. “You, uh, you okay, Dean?” he asks.

Dean glances up at him.

There’s a darkness under those hazel eyes too, a drooping quality  that mirrors Dean’s own in a depressingly similar way. His lips are down turned on a pale face, his hands are tense by his sides. He looks…worried. Upset, sad.

Like he doesn’t really need this fucking shit on top of everything going off at school. Jesus. He doesn’t need Dean breaking down again—and sure, he didn’t scream at Sammy and say _I hate you_ again, but he sure as fuck doesn’t need to see him like this either.

Dean blinks a few times dazedly at the pup just standing there and staring—before he uncurls himself from Gabriel’s lap, pulling himself into sitting properly, the blanket falling to his side. Dean moves along on the sofa and he sits upright, pulling a leg under him as some semblance of normal. He can feel Gabriel’s eyes on him but Sam’s all that matters right now.

Dean forces an eye roll, but it’s something. “Dude. I’m fine. Go finish your homework, you little nerd.”

Sam scoffs. Gabriel playfully bats his arm.

Dean nods at him when the kid turns to leave again, gathering his hoodie in his arms and skedaddling back up the staircase.

It’s silent in the wake of Sam. Dean loses any confidence he’d drilled on for his brothers sake and deflates, picking at his nails as he feels the full weight of an alphas gaze on him—not his alpha. It’s a strange, uncomfortable feeling. Huh.

“We’ve never really had much of a chance to talk, have we?” Gabriel asks after a few seconds, fingers back in Dean’s hair. It’s fine. Really. If he wants to Dean should…he should totally let him.

Dean shakes his head.

“How about I start, huh?” Dean shrugs. “Okay, kiddo, so," he says, leaning back into the arm of the couch and huffing himself there, taking up space, "Cas told you the basics, yeah?” another nod. “Right. Well, like he said, I work with the governmental Department of Omega Rights—fucking mouthful, huh?" He grins. "I work on the ground, you could say, with the common people; in homes, with families, you know. Most people call what I do social work, and I suppose that’s pretty true. Basically, kiddo, I take badly placed omegas like you and I remove them from their abusive situations if the threat is high enough and if I have the jurisdiction to do so. If not, I work with them. I help them better understand, or their alphas understand. I assist newly mated couples, like you and Cas,” he rubs Dean’s hair. “I’m gonna help you two, sweetheart, okay? I’m not gonna let him hurt you again, I swear to God.”

Fear wells inside of Dean unwittingly, painful and raw. A sob wells up from his chest and tears are starting to swim in his eyes and he can’t…he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to _work_ at being mated, he just wants everything to be  _alright_ , if not that than better than fucking _this_. He wants to love his alpha because he _loves_ him, not because chemicals in their bloodstream force them into it. He wanted to be courted, to be kissed chastely on the cheek, on the hand, become mated when the promise of the alpha brought his heat around, didn’t drag it from his insides like a thief in the night.

“Aw, bub,” he says lightly, tucking Dean back to him. “You wanna tell me what's swimming that head o' yours right now?”

“I didn’t…I didn’t want this,” Dean tells him, turning into Gabriel’s Henley, shoving brusquely in to scent at his throat. “Mama wasn’t supposed to sell me like…like _cattle_. She always promised she wouldn’t, that she'd never, not without my say so...but she _did_. She did and now I’m _stuck_ here with _him_ ,” Dean growls. Fucking monumentally stupid, this guy is Castiel’s brother, but he just doesn’t fucking care, not right now. Not when everything’s so fucking _raw_.

“That's some unfair fair shit, huh?” he whispers, rocking them gently back and forth. “But I swear, I’m gonna help you. I won’t let him hurt you like that ever again, you understand me? I’ll keep you safe, kiddo. You and Sam. I’ve got you right now.”

“Please don’t leave him with me,” Dean bursts suddenly, sucking in sharp, hard breaths, but he can't help himself right now, so fucking _wasted_. “ _Please,_ alpha... He’ll hit me again—hurt me. Please. _Please_.”

“No, kitten, okay, I need you to breathe right now, he’s not near you, alrigt, I’ve got you and I’m keeping you safe, you understand me? Dean, hey…breathe with me kiddo, in…and out” Dean sucks in a heavy breath filled with the scent of a foreign alpha, shoving it back from his lungs. He tries again. And again. Until the only thing in his mind is _Gabriel_ and the only thing within his body is _safety_.

Ha. Some joke, huh?

He falls asleep like that, with Gabriel petting his hair.

And when Castiel returns some hours later, he takes Dean off him to a litany of subconscious snarling, takes them both to the guest room and lays them all down together. Dean falls back to sleep with the weight of his mate pressed into his chest, his front; and the weight of a foreigner guarding his back, keeping him guarded.

He sleeps…dreamlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:  
> Dean is treated badly in a KFC because he still smells like fear and Drop without his Alpha, he and Gabriel bond.


	9. Shopping

The first time consciousness drags him into the early morning sunlight, Castiel is bent down over their bed. His face is blurry up close, fuzzed up through Dean’s sleep-lagged eyes, but he can still make out the alpha’s smile and the closer he draws as fingers find their way into his hair.

“I’m headed to work, Dean,” he whispers softly, thumb rubbing at the edge of Dean’s temple. “Gabriel will stay with you all day, so don’t worry about that, alright?” Dean nods dazedly, not entirely understanding but offering his compliance anyway. His eyes are practically drooping. “Alright,” Castiel replies, still smiling. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I’ll see you in time for dinner. Take out?”

Again, Dean nods stupidly. Castiel’s smile seems to grow some, but then Dean’s closing his eyes as he looms closer, making a soft noise in the back of his throat when toothpaste-flavoured lips press a kiss to his forehead.

“I’ll see you later, baby.”

And then he’s gone.

Dean’s about to whine out in injustice—he’d been warm just then, calmed in the soothing cocoon his Alpha had made…but then warm arms are encasing him once more, and he’s pulled back into a soft chest pressing against his spine, so he soothes down pretty quick, to be fair.

Castiel’s fingers are cool as they drape along the back of Dean’s hand, but by then Dean’s too far gone to notice him quietly shutting the spare-room door.

*

The next time Dean finds himself cognisant, there’s a distinct lack of warm chest to manfully nuzzle into and a cold patch where it used to be. Dean whines, digging himself back beneath the sheets.

Smells nice under here, he thinks dopily, snuggling himself lower. It smells like _alpha_ and _mate_ and _safety_ —that undercurrent of contentment that he’s fairly certain only he could pick up in the nest of scents, but is there all the same. Huh. That was a good night’s sleep.

“You awake over there?” comes a voice, and Dean sticks his head above the sheets just enough for his eyes to spy out Gabriel, towel around his waist and hair comb in hand. Dean might be embarrassed at the sight if the alpha hadn’t already had quite the view of his own hand-slapped rear-end, so as it is he doesn’t even react. Just shuffles a little further up the bed until his head’s actually resting on a pillow.

Gabriel smiles, but then of course Gabriel smiles. “Good. Up and at ‘em then, kitten, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us. The shower should still be hot, so you wanna jump in while I sort out breakfast?”

Dean blinks, slowly pushing himself upright.

He doesn’t think…letting him shower shouldn’t be a big deal, right? That’s like… _basic_. As in, of _course_ Dean can shower by himself, he’s not mentally disabled. But, and he hasn’t noticed this until right at this second, he hasn’t showered himself in what must be at least a _week_. Which isn’t to say he’s not clean, because he is—it’s just that through his stay in the hospital, it was Donna and her washcloth and basin that kept him from rotting away…he hadn’t even considered using a shower, and a bath was certainly out of the question.

And that was because they hadn’t trusted him. Castiel hadn’t trusted him to cut out the whole ‘suicide-attempt’ thing, so he hadn’t allowed Dean to _wash himself_. And Dean _hadn’t noticed_.

Jesus Christ. He’s whipped.

And not in the kinky way.

“Yo, buddy, it’s totally cool. I know you won’t try anything,” Gabriel says, staple smirk still plastered on his strange-shaped face. “You’ve got the go ahead, so, you know…enjoy yourself and what not. I’ll be downstairs when you’re done.”

He disappears into the closet then, a duffle bag Dean’s going to assume contains his clothes and stuff slung over his shoulder from where it stood by the door. He doesn’t bother to shut it, just lets it swing back to an angle, enough so the space inside is dark to Dean’s eyes.

Again, Dean just…blinks.

So _they_ don’t think he’s going to try it again, or _Gabriel_ doesn’t think he’s going to try it again? Would he really try something like that…risk his brother’s mate by going against Castiel’s orders? Doesn’t seem entirely likely, but then Dean doesn’t know him. Dean barely knows Castiel, so who the fuck can say, right?

Dean just goes to have a shower.

And doesn’t try to kill himself.

Not that he did before.

*

It’s nice, having solidarity again. A week in the hospital was a mess of sleeping, busy-body nurses, visits by Jo, Gabriel, Sammy, Cas. So being allowed even something as simple as a lonely old shower is…actually really nice. So Dean does enjoy himself, yeah.

And as it’s the spare-room shower, he doesn’t use his usual, high-thread-count towel (Dean didn’t even know that was a thing before traipsing after Castiel in that Omega boutique thing) and the plain, boring old cotton one he wraps around his shoulders is like a relief.

Castiel isn’t waiting for him outside, arms crossed and expectant brow raised and waiting for Dean to rub his skin quickly before dropping it altogether. Sam’s at school, so he won’t flush when Dean descends the stairs as bare as the day he was born, or glance shyly up at his big brother like he’s nothing more than some badly behaved animal. The only thing waiting for Dean that holds some sort of trepidation is Gabriel, but Dean can handle Gabriel. He totally can. So you know what? This is gonna be a good day. He can feel it.

So Dean brushes his teeth (“Ah, before breakfast, champ, you know the rules.” Missouri was very strict on that), ruffles his hair with his fingers, before wrapping the towel more securely around his waist and stepping back into the spare room.

True to his word, Gabriel’s either somewhere else or he’s down in the kitchen like he said, because the rest of the room is empty. Dean thinks if he concentrates hard enough he can smell something cooking wafting from the ajar door, but he’s not certain.

He’s on his way over, in fact, making his way towards Castiel’s proper bedroom at the other end of the house when he notices the very thing he was about to retrieve laid out on the foot of the bed all ready for him.

And as much as being dressed irks him, he’s not actually _being dressed_ , and he must admit, the simple jeans, Henley and khaki jacket resting on the sheets is a step up from the cardigans Castiel likes him in. So he doesn’t grumble too much when he wrestles them on.

A pair of white converse are sat on the floor next to the door, but Dean doesn’t slip then on his socked feet just yet. Mostly, he wants to make sure they are actually for him. And then he’ll only wear then out of the house. Castiel always takes his off before coming in, and Dean isn’t in the business right now of pissing him off again. So. No shoes it is.

“There he is,” Gabriel says loudly, waving a spatula at one of the high stools tucked under the kitchen island as Dean comes silently stalking into the kitchen. “Take a perch, kitten,” he grins.

There’s a place set—well, two, but the other’s on the opposite side and Gabriel waved to this one—right above the alcove on the dog bed, Dean’s assuming because it’ll be easier for him to get his legs under the table, but…Dean’s gonna risk indigestion by eating sideways. Because he is not about to sit anywhere near that shit.

Gabriel watches him with one hand on his hip and the other leaning against the counter, but doesn’t say anything when Dean moves the placemat, cutlery and orange-coloured smoothie thing over to the other end and drags the stool so he can sit down. Just raises a brow. But doesn’t say anything.

Yeah. Dean can handle Gabriel.

“Corso uno,” he says, waving theatrically at the thick liquid in Dean’s cup. In possibly one of the worst Italian accents Dean’s ever heard. “Il…smoothie-o,” he grins. Christ. It’s infectious. “Bon appetite, mon cheri.”

“I thought that was French,” Dean says, ducking his gaze down in case the remark doesn’t go down well.

“…aah, good eye, grasshopper,” he says, and when Dean glances up in surprise his eyes are squinted to go along with another terrible accent. He grins like crazy, all happy with himself and beaming when Dean surprises both of them with a snort. He doesn’t feel embarrassed though. Because Gabriel’s whistling when he goes back to the pan and the sizzling bacon. He doesn’t see Dean’s tiny smirk-wide-eyed hybrid thing, but that’s okay.

“So, quid-pro-quo, kitten,” he says, flipping the streaky bacon rashers onto one plate, French toast onto another, scrambled eggs on a third, and then normal toast on a forth. He carries them over before retrieving one for each of them from the cupboard and setting them down in front of them both. “Favourite movie.”

“Uh…” Dean says dumbly, mostly staring down at all the food in wonderment. Okay. So he’s hungry. And there is enough there to feed both of them, Sammy, and Cas in one go. Christ. “I dunno.”

Gabriel nods blankly. “Wow. Inspiring.” Then he’s grinning again with an eye roll. “Okay, movie that you like, go.”

“I, uh,” Dean stutters, angry with himself for not being able to come up with anything. Gabriel’s being light-hearted, he can smell it on him and sense it with his little lizard/omega hindbrain. He isn’t being pressured. He can damn well do this. “I like horrors, I guess. And action. Anything with Chuck Norris is pretty cool. And Star Wars. I like Star Wars. Episode Three.”

“Dude, obviously,” Gabriel says, nodding along. “Cool. Okay, you go. Ask me anything. My brain is prepared.”

“Uh…what are we doing today?” Dean asks, pulling a few rashers onto his plate slyly, peaking up every few nanoseconds to eye up the alpha. ‘Busy day’ doesn’t sound like something this Dean would be interested in. Old Dean, now old Dean would have jumped at the chance, mostly because it might have meant a day spent with Mama or a visit with Dad and Bobby. New Dean…knows it means a day spent doing something other than waiting for Castiel to return, like going outside or cleaning the house. Nope. Not something he’s interested in.

“Good,” Gabriel offers, probably sensing Dean’s reluctance. “Well, bucko, you and me are going out for the day.”

And then suspiciousness has faded because Dean’s staring up from his barely filled plate to stare at Gabriel like he’s grown another head. He’s about ten seconds from scoffing and saying, “Are you _stupid?!_ Don’t you remember what happened last night, huh? No. No way. Nu-uh.”

He refrains, though. Barely.

“I know, kiddo, but this is gonna be different, I swear. Besides, if you stay inside just because of some fucktards then you’ll never get out of the house, and I’m not letting you go all recluse on us, so. We are going outside today and we are going shopping. It’ll be fun. I swear.”

“Because I wasn’t with my _alpha_ ,” Dean spits out like an angry cat. “They’re just gonna be the same. I don’t want to.”

“I know, bud, and I’m all about respecting that. But I’m making a call here, and honestly, I don’t want what happened last night—a fluke, I might add—to change your mind about going outside. When I’m not around and you’re home alone, I don’t want you staying inside the whole time. Even if it’s just to the corner shop, you can’t rely on your alpha your whole life.”

A _fluke?!_ Says the goddamn alpha.

And as if Dean _wants_ to rely on his alpha. As if he wants to be fucking terrified of stepping outside of his territory that doesn’t even feel like his yet, scared to death of strangers and passers-by. Omega’s get taken like that. Hell, that was how it happened for Dean. Now he has a mate, for fuck’s sake.

“Bud, I’m gonna be there the whole time,” he says, holding his hands up by his head. “I’m not expecting you to go gallivanting off into the sunset all alone, but right now I don’t want that fear setting in. I’m gonna show you that life can be okay even if your alpha’s not there. Which, believe me, I know, _sucks_. But just give me a chance, kitten. I swear.”

“And what if it happens again?” Dean murmurs, picking up a rasher with his fingers and not minding the grease. Castiel would swat him for it. But as Gabriel says, Castiel’s not here.

“We persevere and you get to ignore me for the rest of the trip. Hell, I’ll give you one free slap, right here,” he points at his own maroon-shirted arm. “Deal?”

No. No deal.

“… _Fine_.”

They don’t speak for the rest of the meal, but Dean does moan slightly at the taste of fresh mango smoothie.

-*---[—Ω—]---*-

They end up going to a mall, much to Dean’s chagrin. Called _Fashion Valley_. Seriously. Needless to say, Dean’s not exactly eager to go wandering off around the damn place, even if the whole ‘outside mall’ thing is pretty cool. Better than some stuffy old building packed to the brim with sweaty alphas, anyway. Not that this isn’t. It totally is—the only redeeming feature is that it’s outside. With a nice airflow.

Ugh, this is gonna be hell.

“So,” Gabriel says, clapping his hands together. “Where to first?”

They’re stood at the entrance right now, a long walkway of busy shoppers and families and couples and children, between Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. The place is goddamn huge though—curving into the distance as far as Dean can make out with the palm trees and lights, Macy’s right at the end. Shops line the perimeter in stories, at least two, escalators travelling from one to the next, hundreds of people mulling around, in and out of shops, chatting and laughing. When Dean glances over, Gabriel’s staring at a map on one of those billboard things, stepping closer once he has Dean’s attention and motions for him to follow so he can get a good look.

“I’m thinking Omega Age,” Gabriel says, one long fingered hand rubbing at his chin. Dean just rolls his eyes. “Right next to Prada,” he chuckles, voice taking on a snooty quality, and when he turns to Dean he makes a face as if to say ‘how posh’. Dean doesn’t react though. He’s counting the second Hispanic Alpha in all of five minutes to have looked his way. Not gonna go well. Something’s gonna go wrong. He can _feel_ it. “What, not in the clothes shopping mood?” Gabriel asks, following Dean’s gaze to the squat woman—with her very own beta mate—just turning away with a flick of her dark curls over a square shoulder. Goddammit.

“I don’t need any more clothes,” Dean grumbles, shoving his hands into the jacket’s pockets. “Castiel already got me loads.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel drawls cheerily, taking Dean by his shoulders and aiming him towards the centre of the place. “ _Cas_ got you clothes. But did you pick them?” he doesn’t wait for Dean to finish grimacing to shake his head, just answers for him, “No. Exactly. So, we’re starting over. Your choice, bucko. This is your day.”

“Retail therapy,” Dean grumbles, rolling his eyes. “Yay.”

“That’s the spirit!” And then Gabriel’s steering him off god knows where and Dean doesn’t even notice the bearded man leering.

*

“Now I’m gonna hazard a guess here and say you’re not quite done growing yet, am I right?” asks the sales lady (Dean is going to kill Gabriel…how any times did he have to explain, he can pick out his own damn clothes), tucking one arm under her breasts and resting her elbow on the hand. She flicks long, bright blue fingernails at him.

Dean shrugs. How the hell is he meant to know? How is _anyone_?

“Oh, I’ll bet there’s some inches left in you yet, little man,” she grins, all fake tan and false eyelashes and dyed blonde hair. She’s not bad looking though. Maybe if she avoided the tanning salons for a little while, went for the old natural look, she’d be stunning, really. But…who’s Dean to judge? She smells mated, so someone must find that all kinds of attractive. Which is cool. Each to their own. “So. New wardrobe, huh? Must be pretty intimidating. But don’t worry, babe, we’re gonna get this right first time, I promise. Now. Underwear.”

Dean _has_ underwear. Castiel bought him too many already, he sure as hell doesn’t need _more_ …but the woman’s moving away already, and her taloned hand is dragging him with her. Gabriel better damn well be around, Dean _swears_.

On the plus side though, Dean hasn’t seen an alpha in well over five minutes. And whenever he does, they’re too wrapped up in scanning the store or necking their omegas or just being _mated_ to pay him any mind, and for the first time in Dean’s life, he hasn’t minded being in an omega-specific store. He doesn’t _like_ it, but he also doesn’t _mind_ it. Which counts for something.

“Hey, kitten,” Gabriel greets again, appearing from behind one of the bookshelves that actually holds sex toys, all neatly arranged and in pretty colours. Now that’s fucked up. “Getting anywhere?”

“Oh, we’re just getting started, Mr Alpha,” the blonde lady says, batting Gabriel playfully on the chest with the back of her hand and if Dean didn’t know any better, is she…she’s totally _flirting_. Ugh. Gross. Really?

Gabriel grins back at them, raising a brow for Dean’s sake, before looping an arm around Dean’s shoulders and pressing a chaste kiss into his hair. “Alrighty, then,” he says, voice muffled against Dean’s skull. “Let’s do this shit.”

*

“So the Henley is absolutely _perfect_ ,” Sadie says, lifting a grey—that looks _exactly the same colour as all the others_ —against him, resting it to his chest. “You know what, I’m not entirely convinced there’s anything you can’t pull off. But that green, babe, you’re a total knock out.”

Dean’s getting bored and hungry.

They’ve been stood in the same little changing room for the last, like, hour and a half, just staring at Dean trying these damn shirts on and off—and if it’s not shirts then it’s jeans, and if it’s not jeans then it’s some type of underwear…people need to start getting to grips with the fact that omegas _don’t like_ stripping in front of strangers. And said strangers need to get over it. Seriously.

“And I’d go round neck.” She adds that to her clipboard. “Next…uh…” she’s looking through the catalogue, flicking through pages while Dean squirms out of the third Henley in a row and shoves it onto the ever growing pile of discarded clothing on the chair next to Gabriel. “Oh, I know the perfect thing…give me just a sec, I’ll be right back.”

Dean watches her go in the mirror.

“Let’s just see what’s so perfect, and we can get out of here,” Gabriel says quietly from his armchair, all soft gaze and spread limbs. “I didn’t think it’d take this long to be honest with you, kitten. Hey,” he says, calling Dean’s attention. “You doing okay?”

Dean’s shivering, actually. Which is weird. He’s not entirely sure why. “Just…cold.” He’s not, though. There’s an AC in here, but it’s not too bad, not enough to make him shiver.

Dean was doing good. He was being himself again, normal and dependant…he can do this. Nothing’s coming back. _Please_.

Just for now.

“Here, put this back on, you don’t need to try on anything else,” Gabriel says, handing him his actually shirt. “I think she knows your size by now.”

“Thanks,” Dean mutters. He slips back into the pale grey fabric.

About ten seconds later, Sadie comes swinging back into the squat little room, sliding the curtain closed behind her. She hooks the underwear in her hands on the knob on the wall, before turning to him and rubbing her hands together. “Okay, so,” she starts, grinning at them both. “I know these aren’t exactly the most _practical_ things, but I’m thinking the mates definitely gonna enjoy them. Just picture it, babe, your alpha’s off on his long, hard day at work and he comes home, he just wants to relax, let loose…and there you are, taking his jacket and suitcase, wearing nothing but these…now _that’s_ a pay off.”

“No, _that’s_ my baby brother,” Gabriel says, laughing as he stands.

Lingerie. She’s got lacy lingerie. Jesus Christ.

No. No damn _way_.

“Thanks and all, Sadie-baby, but maybe we should let those two pick them out together, yeah? I sure as hell know I don’t want my brother’s mate’s lingerie on my credit card.”

Sadie laughs, luckily, shrugging her slim shoulders as she lets them out of the changing room. “Fair enough. But you keep these in mind for your next shopping trip, okay? They keep comfort in mind, I swear.” She winks at Dean. He is _way_ beyond niceties. “You guys go have another scan around, I’m gonna rack these up on the till for you.”

“Perfect. Thanks, doll,” Gabriel says, winking back. God. It’s been like this for the past _ever_. Dean wants to go _home_. “By the way, kitten,” he mutters conspiratorially once they’re back in the pale pink tones of the shop with Sadie far enough away, his hand a light pressure on Dean’s shoulder, “I have no problem with having my brother’s mate’s lingerie on my credit card, so if that’s what you want, have the hell at it. I just figured you might not want to be thinking about my brother in positions where you might be wearing panties, but if I’m wrong, entirely my bad. You can pick out whatever you want.”

“I’m good,” Dean replies hastily, cheeks staining red. He is not— _is not_ —going to be in any position with Gabriel’s brother where he might be seen wearing lace. Okay? Not fucking _ever_. Christ.

“Okay, buddy,” Gabriel says, squeezing his neck. Dean shrinks into the pressure. “But you let me know if you ever change your mind.”

He won’t. Seriously.

“Damn, they look comfy,” he says suddenly, moving away to get a better look at these fluffy blue things called _Heat Slippers_ …because they’re in the Heat section. As if any of this stuff would actually _help_.

“Gabriel?” comes a soft little voice from behind Dean, all smooth tones and high pitch. “Alpha Novak.”

Dean watches quietly as Gabriel turns to the voice, eyebrow raised in preparatory question before he sets his sights down on its owner and his entire demeanour lights up. He drops the heat slippers like they burned him (ironic) and lets them clatter to the floor in favour of offering a delighted chuckle and storming towards—Dean turns to look—a small blonde boy. Not much older than fifteen, surely, and he’s small, he’s _tiny_ , but he’s so textbook omega it hurts to look. Ear length, wavy hair the colour of melted butter and these azure, wide eyes fixed ecstatically on Gabriel…but there’s a scar, stretched out across the left side of his face, burns, Dean would imagine, reaching far into his hairline and screwing up his left ear, but…he’s still beautiful. He’s stunning.

“Scottie?” Gabriel beams, squatting his knees a little to get a better view into the kid’s eyes, letting his hands come out to rest of either side of that happy little face. “Geeze, kiddo, you grew up, huh?”

“You haven’t seen me in…over a year,” he speaks again, voice like serenading angels to match that soft face. “You don’t look any different.”

“Aw, shucks,” Gabriel teases, cupping him playfully on the jaw. “You’re just saying that. God, come here, you little rascal,” he says, standing straight once more to allow the boy a spot against his stomach, his head nestling in to the dip of his armpit. “You look good, angel,” he says, smoothing down that fair hair. “Happy.”

“I am,” Scottie sighs, fine hands coming up to grip at Gabriel’s jacket. “Thanks to you.”

Jesus…if Dean didn’t know better, he’d have said this whole thing was staged as shit. Gabriel takes him out to show him how damn trustworthy he can be, and this kid shows up with his soft blue shirt and tight jeans, and that _face._ Staged. Seriously.

Especially when some Asian Amazonian lady comes gracefully stomping over; all supermodel height and long black hair and stands behind the angel-boy stinking of overprotective alpha—that is until she sees who it is he’s hugging. Then she just grins.

“Gabe?” she grins, reaching over her mate—Dean’s assuming, they sure smell the part—to clasp Gabriel in a hug of their own, brushing her wrist over his temple in a familiar scent-marking gesture…one he doesn’t retaliate, thank God. Dean’s only ever seen family do that, between alpha’s especially. This is weird.

Or set up.

“Mai,” Gabriel greets. “Stunning as ever.”

“Ever the charmer,” she replies, retrieving her omega and resting her arms over his chest. The kid’s still grinning. “How are you?”

“I’m great,” he replies, beaming up at her. “You two seem to have settled down well.”

“Mmm,” the giantess hums, nestling her nose into Scottie’s hair. He squirms a little, but not from trying to run. He’s like a bundle of puppy, seriously. He’s worse than _Sam_. “Very well. You did good, Gabe, I’ve got to admit.”

“Well, it is my job, so…” he says, trailing off. Only then does he seem to remember Dean. “Dean, bud…this is Mai,” he introduces, gesturing to the supermodel. She smiles slyly down at him, lips still partly covered by her mates hair. “And this tiny thing here is Scott.”

“Hi, Dean,” Scott says, voice quiet where it was eager before, body once filled with energy now stiff with discomfort. Dean can…understand. Well, actually.

“Hey,” he replies.

“We worked together a few years back now…I practically set them up,” he explains, all but oozing pride in the statement, eyes fixed dolefully on the pair.

“And this one…you smell mated, Dean, but surely not Gabriel,” Mai says, laughing aloud. “This old spinster. How is it you know each other?”

“He’s Castiel’s luck, actually,” Gabriel offers, drawing Dean into him.

“Playing match maker still, are we?”

Gabriel smiles ruefully, glancing down at Dean with a sad simile. “No, unfortunately. Cas did this one all on his own.”

“Then it must run in the family,” Mai smiles.

Scott goes slowly back to wriggling in her grip. “We were gonna go for lunch,” he says quietly, reaching up to lace his fingers through Mai’s. “Are you gonna come?” And he looks _hopeful_. He’s a timid boy, Dean can tell…the way he doesn’t meet even Dean’s eyes, the fellow omega, his quiet words and twitchy disposition. But he looks so goddamn eager at the idea of Gabriel joining them for food, for even another few seconds spent with the man that Dean has to wonder about their relationship, whether it’s always been entirely platonic. Alpha’s can share, sometimes, right? Some fucked up trading thing…is that what this is? Is that what Gabriel _does_?

Gabriel must sense Dean’s tenseness stiffening on his arms, because next thing Dean knows he’s being tucked against a sturdy side and half hidden on what he thinks must be instinct and he replies, “You know I’d love to, kiddo, more than anything, but right now I need to get Dean-o here back home…in a few weeks, once everything’s calmed at work, how about I stop by? See how Muchu’s doing, huh?”

Mai smiles in return, sliding her hands up on the boy until they rest in his hair, pushing it into manic disarray. She kisses his crown, nuzzling into his scent. “That sounds perfect,” she replies for the suddenly sullen boy. “We look forward to having you.”

And it looks like they’re about to depart, Mai offering Gabriel a half hug over Scott again, Gabriel pressing a kiss to the back of his hand—both of them nodding to Dean in goodbye—when all of a sudden Gabriel’s suddenly full of pale omega, arms wrapped around his neck.

“I missed you,” Scott confides quietly, his face pressed into Gabriel’s throat. “Please come visit. Okay? You have to promise.”

“Hey sweetheart,” Gabriel soothes, running soft hands over the boy’s sides. “I promise. And I’m gonna bring Chinese, okay? Just you wait.”

“Traitor,” Mai murmurs, but she’s smiling too.

“Good,” Scott whispers conspiratorially, eyes squeezed shut. “I really don’t like Japanese food.”

“Double traitor,” Mai laughs, reaching out for the boy once it’s clear the whole departure thing is back on, tucking his slim form back into her chest. “I’ll see you then, Gabe. It was nice meeting you, Dean. You’re welcome, too.”

“Thanks,” Dean mutters. He trails behind Gabriel as he moves away though, catching a tiny snippet of,

“Alright, puppy, have at it. Just remember this is for the whole week, okay? Pick something you’re not just gonna get bored of,”

And Dean flushes, scrambling back to Gabriel’s side.

They pay—Dean frowning at the price, raising two eyebrows as an ‘are you serious?’, but Gabriel shakes off his hand and slides his card in anyway—and then go shopping a little more, hitting up home stores and Macy’s and somewhere that sells shoes so Dean can buy some leather hiking boots. The converse are nice, but these…are really cool.

Then they head back home. Gabriel makes them lunch, then they sit outside and devour the sandwiches, and Dean wants to know but he doesn’t ask about the mates they just met. Gabriel doesn’t tell him anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

And after lunch, when Dean’s just finished drying and Gabriel’s wiping his hands clean on a dishcloth…he says,

“Can you trust me for a minute, Dean?”

And Dean frowns. “Nothing sinister, kiddo, I swear,” he chuckles, shaking his head a little at what must be the look on Dean’s face. “I just wanna show you something for a few seconds…if you absolutely fucking hate it, we can stop instantly, but—I’d like you to see something. If that’s okay.”

“…what is it?” Dean asks, drying his own hands.

“Like I said, this is your choice,” he assures. “But I wanted to show you the room upstairs. Let you look around for a bit.”

The room with the cage, he means. The room where Castiel had planned on beating him with his belt, where he was banished as punishment. The damn _Room_.

“Why?” Dean asks, shoulders hunching in defence of himself, eyes scanning lowly along the marble flooring.

“Because I think it’s about time you knew what the point of it was—and for the record, it’s _never_ punishment, okay? Once again, Cas was so far outta line with that shit, I can’t even tell you. So I want to show you what it means. For both of you.”

Dean really, really doesn’t want to. He wants to forget every inch of that space—have a brick wall installed at the foot of the stairs and just erase it from his memories, but he knows…he can’t. For starters, Castiel would never let him—if Gabriel doesn’t make him do this, Castiel will. And secondly, he’s not a child. And it’s a _room_ , for God’s sake. Dean may have acted all of twelve over the last however many weeks, but he’s not, and it’s about time he starting behaving that way. He can do this. He can be mature. He will.

“Okay,” Dean says, straightening his back. “Okay.”

For the second time this fortnight, Dean’s struck with a pounce of baby blue the second the ominous door opens and the damn room is bared to him again. And it’s not that bad, but everything—it’s like a cheesy movie, when that high-strung music plays and they zoom in on the scary parts, like an electric chair or knives or a fucking _cage_. Dean’s eyes jump around like fucking crickets—narrowing onto the cage first (and okay, maybe it’s not made out of rusting steel, but the bone structure is still metal, beneath the entire coating of pale blue fabric, which is _just as bad_ ), and then the sheet less bed (which isn’t sheet less, it just doesn’t have covers), then swings over to the cabinet and chest of draws, and…an iPod doc, fitted with a chunky iPod. There’s a little alcove bit, tucked beneath the slanted roof and skylight, just past the chest of drawers, that holds some shelves chocked to the brim with blankets and fleeces and sheets…warmth. They’d make a damn good nest though.

But it’s not… _so_ bad. And yeah, the cage isn’t okay, and Dean doesn’t like the thought of what those chests might hold, but on the outside, it’s not so bad.

“You can snoop once Castiel gets back, kitten,” Gabriel says, strolling into the room. “He’ll be a hell of a lot better at this than I would be. Besides, he knows where shit is. I haven’t a clue.”

“What’s it for?” Dean asks quietly, stepping closer to the doorframe so he can hide behind it, just slightly. Subtly.

“It’s called the Sanctum,” Gabriel replies. He’s walking towards the shelves now, dragging down a few blankets and carrying them over to the bed. “A lot of omega households have them, actually. This is, basically, kitten, your sanctuary. If you need to come here to feel safe, you do that. Maybe it’s in your heat, after it, before it, maybe it’s nowhere near it and you need to cool out a little, you can come here to do it. Castiel taking you up here for punishment,” Gabriel pauses in the centre of the room, blankets draping on the hardwood floor, “that was shit. Totally wrong of him. And you can rest assured he didn’t get away with it.”

Dean shakes his head a little. Castiel was going to beat him up here, Dean thought, lock him in a cage and leave him to rot, he was convinced…so hey, if this room still freaks him out a little, it’s not _all_ his fault. Castiel threatened him.

“I don’t know about you, champ but I’m beat,” he says, laying out the mass of blankets of the white bed. He snoops around in the chest then, uncovering…pillows. Four of them. Huh. “Naptime?”

“’kay,” Dean whispers, tiptoeing closer.

The cage is on the other side of the room. Gabriel won’t be able to drag him into it without him waking up, and then he can fight like hell and get away and hope this alpha isn’t as fast as his own. He can do this. He’s not a baby.

And when Gabriel’s arms wrap around his own, and the nest of blankets becomes _his_ nest of blankets, well…nap Dean does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, chickens!


End file.
